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EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY 
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS 



TRAVEL AND 
TOPOGRAPHY 



AN INLAND VOYAGE AND 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
INTRODUCTION BY ARMOUR CALDWELL 



THE PUBLISHERS OF EVERYMAN'S 
LIBRARY WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND 
FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST 
OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED 
VOLUMES TO BE COMPRISED UNDER 
THE FOLLOWING THIRTEEN HEADINGS 



TRAVEL # SCIENCE # FICTION 

THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY 

HISTORY & CLASSICAL 

FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

ESSAYS & ORATORY 

POETRY & DRAMA 

BIOGRAPHY 

REFERENCE 

ROMANCE 



IN FOUR STYLES OF BINDING: CLOTH, 
FLAT BACK, COLOURED TOP; LEATHER, 
ROUND CORNERS, GILT TOP: LIBRARY 
BINDING IN CLOTH, & QUARTER PIGSKIN 



New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 



AN INLAND 
VOYAGE & 
TRAVELS 

aDONKEY^ 



rfo *2 



<*to 



ROBERTIDUIS STEVENSON 




NEW YORK 
PUBLISHED BY 

E-P'DUTTONKO 



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<v 



Copyright, 1913, 
By E. P. Dutton & Company 



©CI.A357198 



INTRODUCTION 

" There is not a life in all the records of the 
past but, properly studied, might lend a hint and 
a help to some contemporary," wrote Stevenson 
in his essay on The Morality of the Profession 
of Letters. And of the lives of few men is this 
more finely true than of the life of Stevenson 
himself; for to few men is it given to preserve 
a nicer consonance between " the theory of life " 
and " the art of living." The life of a man is 
a bigger, a finer thing than any single deed which 
issues forth from it ; and we may find in the end 
that the best of Stevenson's works is his life. To 
say that his life rather than his Treasure Island 
is his masterpiece is to cut close to the truth. 

Robert Louis Stevenson was born at Edin- 
burgh the 13th day of November, 1850. From 
his father and his grandfather, who were eminent 
lighthouse engineers, he probably derived his 
structural carefulness and his love of the sea. 
From his mother he inherited a happy spirit, a 
roving love of active life, and something of his 
bad health. When she was past sixty, and had 
spent a lifetime in conventional Edinburgh, she 
cheerfully broke all the old bonds and removed 
to Apia, in the South Sea Islands, where she 
learned to ride bare-back and go bare-foot with 
her then famous son Robert. The gusto and 
zest with which the aged mother took up a new 



viii INTRODUCTION 

manner of life in a new and isolated part of the 
world helps to explain the son's fondness for 
calling himself a tramp and a gipsy. On his 
mother's side, one ancestor was a minister and 
another a Professor of Moral Philosophy. From 
these two men Stevenson derived a turn for mor- 
alizing. In fact, he himself wrote of his ma- 
ternal grandfather, the Rev. Lewis Balfour: 
" Now I often wonder what I have inherited from 
this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that 
he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, 
though I never heard it maintained that either 
of us loved to hear them." But, while Steven- 
son liked at times to point the moral, he was not, 
like Carlyle, primarily Moralist; his attitude was 
rather a fusion of that of the Moralist and that 
of the Artist; he was at once a preacher and a 
Bohemian ; he would lay down loftily the maxims 
of life, but he would live life with the carefree 
heartiness of a boy. These, then, were the an- 
cestral strains in his blood; and his life and char- 
acter seem unusually logical resultants. 

For his nurse, Alison Cummingham, Stevenson, 
to the end of his days, expressed an unbounded 
devotion. " Cummy " it was, rather than his 
mother, who read to him tales of adventure and 
poems, while he stood at her knee, and to whom 
he later (1885) dedicated his best collection of 
poems, A Child's Garden of Verses. 

Nearly all that we have to record of Stevenson 
is in some way related to the fact that he started 
life as a delicate or sickly child. His attendance 
upon school was for this reason desultory. He 
made frequent trips to southern France for his 
health's sake. At school, he soon gained, and al- 



INTRODUCTION ix 

ways after held, the reputation for ignoring en- 
tirely those studies which did not please his fancy 
and for delving most assiduously into those sub- 
jects which he liked. It was no wonder, then, 
that, after three and a half years' pursuit of the 
engineering course at the University of Edin- 
burgh, he failed signally in his work and flatly 
refused to proceed farther. Of this period he 
afterward wrote, in "Random Memories " : 
" Anstruther is a place sacred to the Muse. . . . 
This was when I came as a young man to glean 
engineering experience from the building of a 
breakwater. What I gleaned I am sure I don't 
know; but indeed I had already my own private 
determination to be an author; I loved the art 
of words and the appearances of life. ... To 
grow a little catholic is the compensation of years ; 
youth is one-eyed ; and in those days, though I 
haunted the breakwater by day, and even loved 
the place for the sake of the sunshine, the thril- 
ling seaside air, the wash of the waves on the sea- 
face, the green glimmer of the diver's helmet 
far below, and the musical clinking of the 
masons, my one genuine preoccupation lay else- 
where, and my only industry was in the hours 
when I was not on duty." 

This determination to follow a literary career 
was a great disappointment to his father, who 
had destined the lad to be a marine engineer, 
a profession in which his father, his two uncles, 
and his grandfather had already excelled. But 
Robert compromised with his father by taking 
up the law. Accordingly, we find him, in July, 
1875, called to the Scottish Bar. He took up 
quarters for the practice of law, and went so 



x INTRODUCTION 

far as to hang his name outside the door, but 
no clients came, and he soon abandoned the pro- 
fession. 

From this time on, Stevenson spent most of 
his time in the pursuit of health. He was des- 
tined not to stay long in one place, and it is with 
difficulty that we follow, in any detail, the full 
course of his wanderings. At the age of six- 
teen, he had already visited the more picturesque 
parts of Italy, Switzerland, and the Rhine region. 
Before he left the university, he had made, in 
1872, excursions in Scotland, Frankfort, the 
Black Forest, and Normandy, and, in 1875, the 
Western Isles (Scotland), Chester, Wales, and 
Buckinghamshire. The next year in company 
with Sir Walter Simpson, son of the world- 
famous promulgator of chloroform, he made a 
canoe-trip in Belgium and France, which re- 
sulted in the publication of his first printed book, 
An Inland Voyage (1878). 

On his return from this voyage, he met, in 
the art-settlement of Fontainebleau, in the heart 
of France, an American lady, Mrs. Osbourne, 
who had left an uncongenial husband in Cali- 
fornia in order to seek a more attractive at- 
mosphere for her two children and herself. A 
strong attachment soon grew up between the 
American woman and the young Scotchman, and 
each found it difficult to forget the other. In 
1879, Mrs. Osbourne returned to her native 
state and Stevenson went on another journey 
— this time through the Cevennes, France, an 
account of which appeared in a volume entitled 
Travels zvith a Donkey (1879). 

Although he had now the acquaintance of 



INTRODUCTION xi 

such men as Mr. Sidney Colvin, Mr. Andrew 
Lang, W. E. Henley, and George Meredith, 
these could not hold his mind from the one 
woman who had come into his life, and soon after 
Mrs. Osbourne's departure, Stevenson set sail for 
America, going in the steerage of an emigrant 
ship, partly for the sake of economy and partly 
for the experience, which he later described 
in The Amateur Emigrant and Across the 
Plains. But in California came the breakdown. 
The knowledge that his father thought his life 
rather vagabondish at this time, the hardships 
of the long voyage, followed by the slow, stifling 
journey across the continent (it was August) 
and the news of Mrs. Osbourne's illness : all 
combined to shatter his own delicate health. 
In consequence, another trip of one hundred and 
fifty miles south to the Coast Range of mountains 
beyond Monterey was now necessary. Here he 
endeavored to win back his strength by camp- 
ing alone out of doors. This was nearly the un- 
doing of him, for he lay two nights in a stupor 
under a tree, where two goatherds finally found 
him. As soon as he had sufficiently recovered, 
he returned to San Francisco, where he was 
nursed back to something like his old self by 
Mrs. Osbourne, and began in stern earnest his 
struggle with life — a struggle which was to 
grow harder year by year till the end. 

To make matters worse, his affair with Mrs. 
Osbourne had been misreported to his father, 
who now cut off Robert's accustomed income. 
The voyager was for the first time thrown ut- 
terly upon his own resources. He began to write 
essays and sketches for the magazines, but he 



xii INTRODUCTION 

had difficulty in getting the editors to accept 
them, and received little money for them. These 
were assuredly dark, drear months through 
which the young man was passing, but he never 
lost heart, never turned his back on his chosen 
art. But Fortune, before many months, shone 
upon him with redoubled rays : he had improved 
somewhat in health; his father, who now under- 
stood the situation, renewed the annuity; and 
Mrs. Osbourne was at last free to marry. Ac- 
cordingly, there was consummated, in May, 1880, 
one of those well-nigh perfect unions. Mrs. 
Stevenson (as we must now call her) was of a 
literary temperament, o? unconventional habits 
of thought and action, and of a warmly affection- 
ate nature; and she certainly added immeasur- 
ably to the happiness of the remaining years of 
her husband's life. After a brief stay with his 
family at a deserted mining town fifty miles 
north of San Francisco — the scene of The 
Silverado Squatters — he sailed for Liverpool 
with his wife and stepson. 

But he soon found, as he had repeatedly found 
before, that he could not endure the rigors of a 
northern climate, and the rest of his life became 
a continuous quest after health. Of this period, 
his friend, Mr. Sidney Colvin writes : " His 
life became that of an invalid, vainly seeking 
health by change of place, rarely out of the doc- 
tor's hands, often forbidden to speak (a depriva- 
tion almost as great to himself as to those about 
him), and for the most part denied the pleasures 
of outdoor exercises. His courage, naturally of 
the kind that courts danger in a life of action and 
adventure, had to be trained to the passive mood 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

of endurance under distressing physical disabil- 
ities. The trial was manfully borne; his pres- 
ence never ceased to be sunshine to those about 
him ; and in every interval of respite he worked 
with eager toil and in unremitting pursuit of the 
standards he had set before himself." But while 
still in his native Scotland, he unwittingly com- 
menced his masterpiece, Treasure Island. The 
Stevensons were spending the early autumn of 
1 88 1 at Braemar, a small village in the north- 
center of Scotland. To console his little step- 
son for the continued mirky weather, which en- 
forced the lad's staying indoors, he conceived 
the notion of writing a boy's book of adventure, 
such as he himself had delighted to hear nurse 
" Cummy " narrate to him when he was a boy. 
The story, at first called The Sea Cook, was 
published serially in Young Folks, where it 
created little stir; on its appearance over a year 
later (1883) in book form, however, its author 
sprang into immediate fame. None of his other 
works, save possibly the story of Dr. Jekyll 
and Mr. Hyde (1886), has held the public 
attention so widely and so long. 

Meantime, Stevenson had been far from idle. 
Earlier in the year in which he had commenced 
Treasure Island (that is, in 1881), he had 
collected a number of his essays and sketches in 
a volume entitled Virginibus Puerisque which 
he followed up the next year with another volume 
of essays, Familiar Studies of Men and Books. 
In the latter year (1882), he gathered his short 
stories also in a volume which he called the 
New Arabian Nights. 

Thus Stevenson continued to write and to 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

travel. Two winters he spent at Davos Platz 
(Switzerland), a part of another at Marseilles, 
a year at Hyeres (on the Mediterranean Sea, 
not far from Marseilles) ; then, to be near his 
father, whose health was failing, he lived for 
three years at Bournemouth (on the south coast 
of England). Finally, his father having died, 
he turned his back upon Europe forever and 
sailed once again to America, in August of 1887. 
That winter he spent at Saranac Lake, in the 
care of a doctor. After three cruises, he built 
himself a home in the far-off island of Samoa, 
in the South Seas, in 1890, where his literary 
activity became greater than ever — if possible 
— and where he also found time to concern 
himself with the politics of the island and give 
valuable assistance in internal improvements. 
Here death suddenly overtook him, in 1894, sin- 
cerely mourned by the natives, who looked upon 
him as a wise and almost god-like judge in their 
affairs, who called him affectionately Tusitala 
(Teller of Tales), who, in recognition of the 
many benefits he had bestowed upon them, built 
to his house a great white road which they called 
" The Road of the Loving Heart," and who, 
after he had put off pain and disease forever, 
cut an almost perpendicular pathway to the top 
of the mountain Vaea, and bore his body thence 
to its last resting place. 

When we consider the circumstances under 
which Stevenson labored, his literary output, 
both in quantity and in quality, seems astound- 
ing. He published his first real book at the age 
of twenty-eight, and he died in his forty-fourth 



INTRODUCTION xv 

year: yet he crowded into these sixteen years 
over forty separate publications, to say nothing 
of the ten titles which have been added since his 
death. His works now occupy about thirty 
volumes, which is a record, pretty evenly sus- 
tained, of almost two volumes a year, every one 
of which was composed with scrupulous con- 
science by a " master of the magic of words," 
to use Kipling's phrase. He preached the " gos- 
pel of work," and lived it; the quality which he 
most exalted was Courage, and this he himself 
had in double degree. He liked even pirates 
for their courage. He lived his life with a will 
and with good cheer, not dreading to lay it down 
when he must; there is no more self -revealing, 
consistent, and winning personality in English 
literature. 

To have met life on its own terms, and not 
to have asked of it especial favors ; to have been 
handicapped from the start of the race by a 
frail body, and yet to have taught us, in brave, 
compelling phrases, the duties of work, of cour- 
age, of simple manliness, and of happiness; to 
have labored amidst trying and curtailing condi- 
tions, and yet to have achieved a man's measure 
of work at an age when many of us have but 
half begun ; and then to have gone down at last 
with honor, if not with victory — with his hand 
still at the helm, and joy in his heart, and a smile 
on his lips : surely this was not to have lived in 
vain. 

On Stevenson's tombstone, there is inscribed, 
in obedience to his own wish, the Requiem which 
he composed for himself: 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

Under the wide and starry sky 
Dig the grave and let me lie ; 
Glad did I live and gladly die, 
And I laid me down with a will. 

This be the verse you grave for me, — 
Here he lies where he longed to be ; 
Home is the sailor, home from the sea, 
And the hunter home from the hill. 

Armour Caldwell 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Pentland Rising, a Page of History 1666, 
1866; The Charity Bazaar: an Allegorical Dia- 
logue, 1868; An Appeal to the Church of Scotland, 
1875; An Inland Voyage, 1878; Picturesque Notes 
on Edinburgh, 1879; Travels with a Donkey in the 
Cevennes, 1879; Deacon Brodie, or The Double 
Life (Drama, in collaboration with W. E. Henley), 
1880; Not I, and other Poems, 1881 ; Virginibus 
Puerisque, 1881 ; Familiar Studies of Men and 
Books, 1882; Moral Emblems, 1882; New Arabian 
Nights, 1882; Treasure Island, 1883; The Silver- 
ado Squatters, 1883 ; Admiral Guinea, and Beau 
Austin (Dramas, in collaboration with W. E. Hen- 
ley), 1884; Prince -Otto, 1885; A Child's Garden 
of Verses, 1885 ; More New Arabian Nights : the 
Dynamiter, 1885; Macaire (Melodramatic Farce, 
in collaboration with W. E. Henley), 1885; The 
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886; 
Kidnapped, 1886; Some College Memories, 1886; 
The Merry Men, and other Tales and Fables, 1887; 
Underwoods (Poems), 1887; Thomas Stevenson, 
Civil Engineer, 1887; Memories and Portraits, 
1887; Ticonderoga: a Poem, 1887; Memoir of 
Fleeming Jenkin (Introduction to Papers of Fleem- 
ing Jenkin), 1887; The Black Arrow: a Tale of 
the Two Roses, 1888; Misadventures of John 
Nicholson, 1888 (from Yule Tide) ; The Master of 
Ballantrae, 1888; The Wrong Box (in collaboration 
with Mr. Lloyd Osbourne), 1889; Ballads, 1890; 
The South Seas, 1890 (privately printed) ; 1890 
(thirty-five letters); Father Damien, 1890; The 
Wrecker (in collaboration with Mr. Lloyd Os- 



xviii BIBLIOGRAPHY 

bourne), 1892; Across the Plains, with other Mem- 
ories and Essays, 1892; A Footnote to History, 
1892; Three Plays (Deacon Brodie, Beau Austin, 
and Admiral Guinea), 1892; Island Nights Enter- 
tainments, 1893; War in Samoa, 1893; David Bal- 
four (a Sequel to Kidnapped; called Catriona, in 
England), 1893; The Ebb-Tide (in collaboration 
with Mr. Lloyd Osbourne), 1894. 

Posthumous Publications. — Vailima Letters, 
1895; Four Plays (in Collaboration with W. E. 
Henley), 1895; Fables (with new Edition of Dr. 
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), 1896; Weir of Hermiston, 
1896; Songs of Travel, 1896; Familiar Epistles in 
Prose and Verse (for private distribution), 1896; 
St. Ives (last chapters by Mr. A. T. Quiller-Couch), 
1898 (from Pall Mall Magazine) ; Lay Morals and 
other Papers (containing some new matter), 191 1; 
Letters (complete edition, chronologically arranged, 
containing the Vailima Letters and 150 new let- 
ters), 191 1. 

Editions of Works. — Edinburgh Edition, edited 
by Sidney Colvin (includes contributions to peri- 
odicals and many uncollected writings), 28 vols., 
1894-98; Pentland Edition, with Bibliographical 
Notes by Edmund Gosse, 1906, etc. ; Biographical 
Edition (with Prefaces by Mrs. R. L. Stevenson), 
1905; Swanston Edition, 191 1. 

Songs of Travel, and other Verse, edited by S, 
Colvin, 1896; Letters to his Family and Friends, 
edited by Sidney Colvin, 1899; Some Stevenson 
Letters, with Introduction by H. Townsend, 1902; 
Essays, edited by W. L. Phelps, 1906. 

Life. — Henry James, in Partial Portraits, 1894; 
By Prof. Walter Raleigh, 1895 I Edmund Gosse, 
Robert Louis Stevenson: Personal Memories (in 
Critical Kitkats, 1896) ; H. B. Baildon, 1901 ; Gra- 
ham Balfour, 1901 (the standard Life) ; G. K. 
Chesterton (Bookman "Booklets"), 1902; Earl of 
Rosebery, Wallace, Burns, Stevenson: Apprecia- 



BIBLIOGRAPHY xix 

tions, 1903 ; Stevenson's Shrine, The Record of a 
Pilgrimage, by Laura Stubbs, 1903; A. J. Japp, 
Robert Louis Stevenson: a Record, an Estimate, 
and a Memorial (with some unpublished let- 
ters), 1905; also in Famous Scots Series (M. M. 
Black), and Modern English Writers (L. C. Corn- 
ford). 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction vii 

An Inland Voyage 

Dedication xxiii 

Preface xxv 

Antwerp to Boom 3 

On the Willebroek Canal 8 

The Royal Sport Nautique 14 

At Maubeuge ... . .20 

On the Sambre Canalised: to Quartes ... 25 
Pont-sur-Sambre : We Are Pedlars .... 31 

The Travelling Merchant 38 

On the Sambre Canalised: to Landrecies . . 44 

At Landrecies 50 

Sambre and Oise Canal: Canal Boats ... 55 

The Oise in Flood 61 

Origny Sainte-Benoite : A By-day .... 70 

The Company at Table 77 

Down the Oise: to Moy 85 

La Fere of Cursed Memory 91 

Down the Oise: Through the Golden Valley. 98 

Noyon Cathedral 10 1 

Down the Oise: to Compiegne 107 

At Compiegne no 

Changed Times 116 

Down the Oise: Church Interiors .... 123 

Precy and the Marionettes 130 

Back to the World 142 

xxi 



xxii CONTENTS 

Travels with a Donkey page 

Dedication 146 

Velay 

The Donkey, the Pack, and the Pack-saddle . 147 

The Green Donkey-driver 154 

I have a Goad 165 

Upper Gevaudan 

A Camp in the Dark 173 

Cheylard and Luc 186 

Our Lady of the Snows 

Father Apollinaris . . 191 

The Monks 197 

The Boarders 206 

Upper- GeVaudan (Continued) 

Across the Goulet 214 

A Night Among the Pines . . . . . . 219 

The Country of the Camisards 

Across the Lozere 225 

Pont de Montvert 232 

In the Valley of the Tarn 240 

Florae 252 

In the Valley of the Mimente 256 

The Heart of the Country 261 

The Last Day 270 

Farewell, Modestine 277 



AN INLAND VOYAGE 

TO 
SIR WALTER GRINDLAY SIMPSON, Bart. 

My dear Cigarette, 

It was enough that you should have shared so 
liberally in the rams and portages of our voyage; 
that you should have had so hard a battle to re- 
cover the derelict Arethusa on the flooded Oise; 
and that you should thenceforth have piloted a 
mere wreck of mankind to Origny Sainte-Benoite 
and a supper so eagerly desired. It was perhaps 
more than enough, as you once somewhat piteously 
complained, that I should have set down all the 
strong language to you, and kept the appropriate 
reflexions for myself. I could not in decency ex- 
pose you to share the disgrace of another and more 
public shipwreck. But now that this voyage of 
ours is going into a cheap edition, that peril, we 
shall hope, is at an end, and I may put your name 
on the burgee. 

But I cannot pause till I have lamented the fate 
of our two ships. That, sir, was not a fortunate 
day when we projected the possession of a 
canal barge; it was not a fortunate day when 
we shared our day-dream with the most hopeful 
of day-dreamers. For a while, indeed, the world 
looked smilingly. The barge was procured and 
christened, and as the Eleven Thousand Virgins 
of Cologne, lay for some months, the admired 
of all admirers, in a pleasant river and under the 
walls of an ancient town. M. Mattras, the accom- 
plished carpenter of Moret, had made her a centre 



xxiv DEDICATION 

of emulous labor; and you will not have forgotten 
the amount of sweet champagne consumed in the 
inn at the bridge end, to give zeal to the workmen 
and speed to the work. On the financial aspect, I 
would not willingly dwell. The Eleven Thousand 
Virgins of Cologne rotted in the stream where she 
was beautified. She felt not the impulse of the 
breeze; she was never harnessed to the patient 
track-horse. And when at length she was sold, 
by the indignant carpenter of Moret, there were 
sold along with her the Arethusa and the Cigarette, 
she of cedar, she, as we knew so keenly on a por- 
tage, of solid-hearted English oak. Now these his- 
toric vessels fly the tricolor and are known by 
new and alien names. 

R, L. S. 



PREFACE 

To equip so small a book with a preface is, 
I am half afraid, to sin against proportion. But 
a preface is more than an author can resist, for 
it is the reward of his labors. When the founda- 
tion stone is laid, the architect appears with his 
plans, and struts for an hour before the public 
eye. So with the writer in his preface : he may 
have never a word to say, but he must show 
himself for a moment in the portico, hat in hand, 
and with an urbane demeanor. 

It is best, in such circumstance, to represent 
a delicate shade of manner between humility 
and superiority: as if the book had been written 
by someone else, and you had merely run over 
it and inserted what was good. But for my 
part I have not yet learned the trick to that per- 
fection ; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth 
of my sentiments towards a reader; and if I meet 
him on the threshold, it is to invite him in with 
country cordiality. 

To say truth, I had no sooner finished 
reading this little book in proof than I was seized 
upon by a distressing apprehension. 

It occurred to me that I might not only be 
the first to read these pages, but the last as well; 
that I might have pioneered this very smiling 
tract of country all in vain, and find not a soul 
to follow in my steps. The more I thought, the 
more I disliked the notion ; until the distaste grew 

XXV 



xxvi PREFACE 

into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed into this 
Preface, which is no more than an advertisement 
for readers. 

What am I to say for my book? Caleb and 
Joshua brought back from Palestine a formida- 
ble bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces 
naught so nourishing; and for the matter of 
that, we live in an age when people prefer a defi- 
nition to any quantity of fruit. 

I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? 
for, from the negative point of view, I flatter 
myself this volume has a certain stamp. Al- 
though it runs to considerably upwards of two 
hundred pages, it contains not a single reference 
to the imbecility of God's universe, nor so much 
as a single hint that I could have made a better 
one myself, — I really do not know where my 
head can have been. I seemed to have forgotten 
all that makes it glorious to be man. 'Tis an 
omission that renders the book philosophically un- 
important ; but I am in hopes the eccentricity may 
please in frivolous circles. 

To the friend who accompanied me I owe many 
thanks already, indeed I wish I owed him noth- 
ing else; but at this moment I feel towards him 
an almost exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, 
will become my reader — if it were only to fol- 
low his own travels alongside of mine. 

R. L. S. 



AN INLAND VOYAGE 



AN INLAND VOYAGE 



ANTWERP TO BOOM 

We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. A 
stevedore and a lot of dock porters took up the 
two canoes, and ran with them for the slip. A 
crowd of children followed cheering. The Ciga- 
rette went off in a splash and a bubble of small 
breaking water. Next moment the Arethasa was 
after her. A steamer was coming down, men on 
the paddle-box shouted hoarse warnings, the 
stevedore and his porters were bawling from the 
quay. But in a stroke or two the canoes were 
away out in the middle of the Scheldt, and all 
steamers, and stevedores, and other 'longshore 
vanities were left behind. 

The sun shone brightly; the tide was making 
— four jolly miles an hour; the wind blew 
steadily, with occasional squalls. For my part, 
I had never been in a canoe under sail in my 
life; and my first experiment out in the middle 
of this big river was not made without some 
trepidation. What would happen when the wind 
first caught my little canvas? I suppose it was 
almost as trying a venture into the regions of the 
unknown as to publish a first book, or to marry. 
But my doubts were not of long duration; and 
in five minutes you will not be surprised to learn 
that I had tied my sheet. 

3 



4 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

I own I was a little struck by this circumstance 
myself; of course, in company with the rest of my 
fellow-men, I had always tied the sheet in a sail- 
ing-boat ; but in so little and crank a concern as a 
canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not 
prepared to find myself follow the same princi- 
ple; and it inspired me with some contemptuous 
views of our regard for life. It is certainly 
easier to smoke with the sheet fastened; but I 
had never before weighed a comfortable pipe of 
tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely 
elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a com- 
monplace, that we cannot answer for ourselves 
before we have been tried. But it is not so com- 
mon a reflection, and surely more consoling, that 
we usually find ourselves a great deal braver and 
better than we thought. I believe this is every 
one's experience: but an apprehension that they 
may belie themselves in the future prevents man- 
kind from trumpeting this cheerful sentiment 
abroad. I wish sincerely, for it would have saved 
me much trouble, there had been some one to put 
me in a good heart about life when I was 
younger; to tell me how dangers are most por- 
tentous on a distant sight; and how the good in 
a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, 
and rarely or never deserts him in the hour of 
need. But we are all for tootling on the senti- 
mental flute in literature; and not a man among 
us will go to the head of the march to sound 
the heady drums. 

It was agreeable upon the river. A barge or 
two went past laden with hay. Reeds and wil- 
lows bordered the stream; and cattle and grey, 
venerable horses came and hung their mild heads 



ANTWERP TO BOOM 5 

over the embankment. Here and there was a 
pleasant village among trees, with a noisy ship- 
ping-yard ; here and there a villa in a lawn. The 
wind served us well up the Scheldt and there- 
after up the Rupel; and we were running pretty 
free when we began to sight the brickyards of 
Boom, lying for a long way on the right bank 
of the river. The left bank was still green and 
pastoral, with alleys of trees along the embank- 
ment, and here and there a flight of steps to 
serve a ferry, where perhaps there sat a woman 
with her elbows on her knees, or an old gentle- 
man with a staff and silver spectacles. But Boom 
and its brickyards grew smokier and shabbier 
with every minute; until a great church with a 
clock, and a wooden bridge over the river, indi- 
cated the central quarters of the town. 

Boom is not a nice place, and is only remark- 
able for one thing: that the majority of the 
inhabitants have a private opinion that they 
can speak English, which is not justified by fact. 
This gave a kind of haziness to our intercourse. 
As for the Hotel de la Navigation, I think it is 
the worst feature of the place. It boasts of a 
sanded parlor, with a bar at one end, looking 
on the street; and another sanded parlor, darker 
and colder, with an empty bird-cage and a tri- 
color subscription box by way of sole adornment, 
where we made shift to dine in the company of 
three uncommunicative engineer apprentices and 
a silent bagman. The food, as usual in Belgium, 
was of a nondescript occasional character ; indeed 
I have never been able to detect anything in the 
nature of a meal among this pleasing people ; they 
seem to peck and trifle with viands all day long in 



6 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

an amateur spirit: tentatively French, truly- 
German, and somehow falling between the two. 

The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, 
and with no trace of the old piping favorite, 
save where two wires had been pushed apart to 
hold its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort 
of graveyard cheer. The engineer apprentices 
would have nothing to say to us, nor indeed 
to the bagman; but talked low and sparingly 
to one another, or raked us in the gaslight with 
a gleam of spectacles. For though handsome 
lads, they were all (in the Scotch phrase) bar- 
nacled. 

There was an English maid in the hotel, who 
had been long enough out of England to pick 
up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and all sorts 
of curious foreign ways, which need not here 
be specified. She spoke to us very fluently in 
her jargon, asked us information as to the man- 
ners of the present day in England, and obligingly 
corrected us when we attempted to answer. 
But as we were dealing with a woman, perhaps 
our information was not so much thrown away 
as it appeared. The sex likes to pick up knowl- 
edge and yet preserve its superiority. It is good 
policy, and almost necessary in the circumstances. 
If a man finds a woman admires him, were it 
only for his acquaintance with geography, he 
will begin at once to build upon the admiration. 
It is only by unintermittent snubbing that the 
pretty ones can keep us in our place. Men, as 
Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe would have said, 
" are such encroachers" For my part, I am 
body and soul with the women; and after a well- 
married couple, there is nothing so beautiful in 



ANTWERP TO BOOM 7 

the world as the myth of the divine huntress. 
It is no use for a man to take to the woods; we 
know him; Anthony tried the same thing long 
ago, and had a pitiful time of it by all accounts. 
But there is this about some women, which over- 
tops the best gymnosophist among men, that they 
suffice to themselves, and can walk in a high 
and cold zone without the countenance of any 
trousered being. I declare, although the reverse 
of a professed ascetic, I am more obliged to 
women for this ideal than I should be to the 
majority of them, or indeed to any but one, for a 
spontaneous kiss. There is nothing so encoura- 
ging as the spectacle of self-sufficiency. And 
when I think of the slim and lovely maidens, run- 
ning the woods all night to the note of Diana's 
horn; moving among the old oaks, as fancy-free 
as they; things of the forest and the starlight, 
not touched by the commotion of man's hot and 
turbid life — although there are plenty other 
ideals that I should prefer — I find my heart beat 
at the thought of this one. 'Tis to fail in life, 
but to fail with what a grace! That is not lost 
which is not regretted. And where — here slips 
out the male — where would be much of the glory 
of inspiring love, if there were no contempt to 
overcome ? 



ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 

Next morning, when we set forth on the Wille- 
broek Canal, the rain began heavy and chill. 
The water of the canal stood at about the drink- 
ing temperature of tea; and under this cold 
aspersion, the surface was covered with steam. 
The exhilaration of departure, and the easy mo- 
tion of the boats under each stroke of the paddles, 
supported us through this misfortune while it 
lasted; and when the cloud passed and the sun 
came out again, our spirits went up above the 
range of stay-at-home humors. A good breeze 
rustled and shivered in the rows of trees that 
bordered the canal. The leaves flickered in and 
out of the light in tumultuous masses. It seemed 
sailing weather to eye and ear ; but down between 
the banks, the wind reached us only in faint 
and desultory puffs. There was hardly enough 
to steer by. Progress was intermittent and un- 
satisfactory. A jocular person, of marine ante- 
cedents, hailed us from the tow-path with a 
" C'est vite, mais c'est long/' 

The canal was busy enough. Every now and 
then we met or overtook a long string of boats, 
with great green tillers ; high sterns with a win- 
dow on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a 
jug or a flower-pot in one of the windows; a 
dingy following behind; a woman busied about 
the day's dinner, and a handful of children. 



ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 9 

These barges were all tied one behind the other 
with tow-ropes, to the number of twenty-five or 
thirty; and the line was headed and kept in mo- 
tion by a steamer of strange construction. It 
had neither paddle-wheel nor screw ; but by some 
gear not rightly comprehensible to the unme- 
chanical mind, it fetched up over its bow a small 
bright chain which lay along the bottom of the 
canal, and paying it out again over the stern, 
dragged itself forward, link by link, with its 
whole retinue of Joaded scows. Until one had 
found out the key to the enigma, there was 
something solemn and uncomfortable in the 
progress of one of these trains, as it moved 
gently along the water with nothing to mark 
its advance but an eddy alongside dying away 
into the wake. 

Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, 
a canal barge is by far the most delightful to 
consider. It may spread its sails, and then you 
see it sailing high above the tree-tops and the 
wind-mill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through 
the green corn-lands: the most picturesque of 
things amphibious. Or the horse plods along 
at a foot-pace as if there were no such thing as 
business in the world; and the man dreaming at 
the tiller sees the same spire on the horizon all 
day long. It is a mystery how things ever get 
to their destination at this rate; and to see the 
barges waiting their turn at a lock, affords a fine 
lesson of how easily the world may be taken. 
There should be many contented spirits on board, 
for such a life is both to travel and to stay at 
home. 

The chimney smokes for dinner as you go 



10 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

along; the banks of the canal slowly unroll their 
scenery to contemplative eyes; the barge floats 
by great forests and through great cities with 
their public buildings and their lamps at night; 
and for the bargee, in his floating home, " travel- 
ling abed," it is merely as if he were listening 
to another man's story or turning the leaves of a 
picture-book in which he had no concern. He 
may take his afternoon walk in some foreign 
country on the banks of the canal, and then come 
home to dinner at his own fireside. 

There is not enough exercise in such a life 
for any high measure of health; but a high 
measure of health is only necessary for unhealthy 
people. The slug of a fellow, who is never ill 
nor well, has a quiet time of it in life, and dies 
all the easier. 

I am sure I would rather be a bargee than 
occupy any position under Heaven that required 
attendance at an office. There are few callings, 
I should say, where a man gives up less of his 
liberty in return for regular meals. The bargee 
is on ship-board; he is master in his own ship; 
he can land whenever he will; he can never 
be kept beating off a lee-shore a whole frosty 
night when the sheets are as hard as iron; and 
so far as I can make out, time stands as nearly 
still with him as is compatible with the return of 
bedtime or the dinner-hour. It is not easy to 
see why a bargee should ever die. 

Half-way between Willebroek and Villevorde, 
in a beautiful reach of canal like a squire's avenue, 
we went ashore to lunch. There were two eggs, 
a junk of bread, and a bottle of wine on board 
the Arethusa; and two eggs and an Etna cook- 



ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 11 

ing apparatus on board the Cigarette. The 
master of the latter boat smashed one of the 
eggs in the course of disembarkation; but ob- 
serving pleasantly that it might still be cooked 
a la papier, he dropped it into the Etna, in its 
covering of Flemish newspaper. We landed in 
a blink of fine weather; but we had not been two 
minutes ashore before the wind freshened into 
half a gale, and the rain began to patter on our 
shoulders. We sat as close about the Etna as 
we could. The spirits burned with great os- 
tentation ; the grass caught flame every minute or 
two, and had to be trodden out ; and before long 
there were several burnt fingers of the party. 
But the solid quantity of cookery accomplished 
was out of proportion with so much display; 
and when we desisted, after two applications 
of the fire, the sound egg was a little more than 
loo- warm ; and as for a la papier, it was a cold 
and sordid fricassee of printer's ink and broken 
eggshell. We made shift to roast the other two 
by putting them close to the burning spirits, 
and that w T ith better success. And then we un- 
corked the bottle of wine, and sat down in a 
ditch with our canoe aprons over our knees. 
It rained smartly. Discomfort, when it is hon- 
estly uncomfortable and makes no nauseous pre- 
tensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous 
business ; and people well steeped and stupefied 
in the open air are in a good vein for laughter. 
From this point of view, even egg a la papier 
offered by way of food may pass muster as a 
sort of accessory to the fun. But this manner 
of jest, although it may be taken in good part, 
does not invite repetition; and from that time 



12 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

forward the Etna voyaged like a gentleman in 
the locker of the Cigarette. 

It is almost unnecessary to mention that when 
lunch was over and we got aboard again and 
made sail, the wind promptly died away. The 
rest of the journey to Villevorde we still spread 
our canvas to the unfavoring air, and with now 
and then a puff, and now and then a spell of 
paddling, drifted along from lock to lock be- 
tween the orderly trees. 

It was a fine, green, fat landscape, or rather 
a mere green water-lane going on from village 
to village. Things had a settled look, as in 
places long lived in. Crop-headed children spat 
upon us from the bridges as we went below, with 
a true conservative feeling. But even more con- 
servative were the fishermen, intent upon their 
floats, who let us go by without one glance. 
They perched upon sterlings and buttresses and 
along the slope of the embankment, gently oc- 
cupied. They were indifferent like pieces of dead 
nature. They did not move any more than if 
they had been fishing in an old Dutch print. 
The leaves fluttered, the water lapped, but they 
continued in one stay, like so many churches es- 
tablished by law. You might have trepanned 
every one of their innocent heads and found no 
more than so much coiled fishing line below 
their skulls. I do not care for your stalwart 
fellows in india-rubber stockings breasting up 
mountain torrents with a salmon rod; but I 
do dearly love the class of man who plies his un- 
fruitful art forever and a day by still and de- 
populated waters. 

At the lock just beyond Villevorde there was 
a lock mistress who spoke French comprehen- 



ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 13 

sibly, and told us we were still a couple of 
leagues from Brussels. At the same place the 
rain began again. It fell in straight, parallel 
lines, and the surface of the canal was thrown 
up into an infinity of little crystal fountains. 
There were no beds to be had in the neighbor- 
hood. Nothing for it but to lay the sails aside 
and address ourselves to steady paddling in the 
rain. 

Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long 
lines of shuttered windows, and fine old trees 
standing in groves and avenues, gave a rich and 
sombre aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk 
to the shores of the canal. I seem to have seen 
something of the same effect in engravings : opu- 
lent landscapes, deserted and overhung with the 
passage of storm. And throughout we had the 
escort of a hooded cart, which trotted shabbily 
along the tow-path, and kept at an almost uni- 
form distance in our wake. 



THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 

The rain took off near Laeken. But the sun 
was already down; the air was chill; and we 
had scarcely a dry stitch between the pair of 
us. Nay, now we found ourselves near the end 
of the Allee Verte, and on the very threshold 
of Brussels we were confronted by a serious 
difficulty. The shores were closely lined by canal 
boats waiting their turn at the lock. Nowhere 
was there any convenient landing-place ; nowhere 
so much as a stable-yard to leave the canoes in 
for the night. We scrambled ashore and entered 
an estaminet where some sorry fellows were 
drinking with the landlord. The landlord was 
pretty round with us ; he knew of no coach-house 
or stable-yard, nothing of the sort; and seeing 
we had come with no mind to drink, he did not 
conceal his impatience to be rid of us. One of 
the sorry fellows came to the rescue. Some- 
where in the corner of the basin there was a 
slip, he informed us, and something else besides, 
not very clearly defined by him, but hopefully 
construed by his hearers. 

Sure enough there was the slip in the corner 
of the basin; and at the top of it two nice- 
looking lads in boating-clothes. The Arethusa 
addressed himself to these. One of them said 
there would be no difficulty about a night's lodg- 
ing for our boats ; and the other, taking a ciga- 
rette from his lips, inquired if they were made 

14 



THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 15 

by Searle & Son. The name was quite an intro- 
duction. Half-a-dozen other young men came 
out of a boat-house bearing the superscription 
Royal Sport Nautique, and joined in the talk. 
They were all very polite, voluble, and enthusi- 
astic; and their discourse was interlarded with 
English boating-terms, and the names of English 
boat-builders and English clubs. I do not know, 
to my shame, any spot in my native land, where 
I should have been so warmly received by the 
same number of people. We were English boat- 
ing-men, and the Belgian boating-men fell upon 
our necks. I wonder if French Huguenots were 
as cordially greeted by English Protestants when 
they came across the Channel out of great tribula- 
tion. But, after all, what religion knits people 
so closely as common sport? 

The canoes were carried into the boat-house; 
they were washed down for us by the club serv- 
ants, the sails were hung out to dry, and everything 
made as snug and tidy as a picture. And in the 
meanwhile we were led upstairs by our new-found 
brethren, for so more than one of them stated 
the relationship, and made free of their lavatory. 
This one lent us soap, that one a towel, a third 
and fourth helped us to undo our bags. And 
all the time such questions, such assurances of 
respect and sympathy! I declare I never knew 
what glory was before. 

" Yes, yes, the Royal Sport Nautique is the 
oldest club in Belgium." 

" We number two hundred." 

" We " — this is not a substantive speech, but 
an abstract of many speeches, the impression left 
upon my mind after a great deal of talk ; and very 



16 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

youthful, pleasant, natural, and patriotic it seems 
to me to be — " We have gained all races, except 
those where we were cheated by the French." 

" You must leave all your wet things to be 
dried." 

" O ! Entre freres! In any boat-house in 
England we should find the same." (I cordially 
hope they might.) 

"En Angleterre, vous employee des sliding- 
seats, n'est-ce pas? " 

" We are all employed in commerce during 
the day; but in the evening, voyez-vous, nous 
sommes serieux!' 

These were the words. They were all em- 
ployed over the frivolous mercantile concerns 
of Belgium during the day; but in the evening 
they found some hours for the serious concerns 
of life. I may have a wrong idea of wisdom, 
but I think that was a very wise remark. People 
connected with literature and philosophy are busy 
all their days in getting rid of second-hand no- 
tions and false standards. It is their profession, 
in the sweat of their brows, by dogged think- 
ing, to recover their old fresh view of life, and 
distinguish what they really and originally like 
from what they have only learned to tolerate per- 
force. And these Royal Nautical Sportsmen had 
the distinction still quite legible in their hearts. 
They had still those clean perceptions of what is 
nice and nasty, what is interesting and what is 
dull, which envious old gentleman refer to as 
illusions. The nightmare illusion of middle age, 
the bear's hug of custom gradually squeezing the 
life out of a man's soul, had not yet begun for 
these happy-star'd young Belgians. They still 



THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 17 

knew that the interest they took in their business 
was a trifling affair compared to their spontane- 
ous, long-suffering affection for nautical sports. 
To know what you prefer, instead of humbly 
saying Amen to what the world tells you you 
ought to 'prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. 
Such a man may be generous ; he may be honest 
in something more than the commercial sense; 
he may love his friends with an elective, personal 
sympathy, and not accept them as an adjunct 
of the station to which he has been called. He 
may be a man, in short, acting on his own in- 
stincts, keeping in his own shape that God made 
him in ; and not a mere crank in the social engine- 
house, welded on principles that he does not 
understand, and for purposes that he does not 
care for. 

For will any one dare to tell me that business 
is more entertaining than fooling among boats? 
He must have never seen a boat, or never seen an 
office, who says so. And for certain the one 
is a great deal better for the health. There 
should be nothing so much a man's business as 
his amusements. Nothing but money-grubbing 
can be put forward to the contrary; no one but 

Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From Heaven, 

durst risk a word in answer. It is but a lying 
cant that would represent the merchant and the 
banker as people disinterestedly toiling for man- 
kind, and then most useful when they are most 
absorbed in their transactions; for the man is 
more important than his services. And when my 
Royal Nautical Sportsman shall have so far fallen 



18 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

from his hopeful youth that he cannot pluck up 
an enthusiasm over anything but his ledger, I 
venture to doubt whether he will be near so nice 
a fellow, and whether he would welcome, with 
so good a grace, a couple of drenched English- 
men paddling into Brussels in the dusk. 

When we had changed our wet clothes and 
drunk a glass of pale ale to the club's pros- 
perity, one of their number escorted us to a 
hotel. He would not join us at our dinner, 
but he had no objection to a glass of wine. En- 
thusiasm is very wearing; and I begin to under- 
stand why prophets were unpopular in Judaea, 
where they were best known. For three stricken 
hours did this excellent young man sit beside us 
to dilate upon boats and boat-races; and before 
he left, he was kind enough to order our bed- 
room candles. 

We endeavored now and again to change the 
subject; but the diversion did not last a moment: 
the Royal Nautical Sportsman bridled, shied, 
answered the question, and then breasted once 
more into the swelling tide of his subject. I call 
it his subject; but I think it was he who was 
subjected. The Arethusa, who holds all racing 
as a creature of the devil, found himself in a 
pitiful dilemma. He durst not own his igno- 
rance for the honor of old England, and spoke 
away about English clubs and English oarsmen 
whose fame had never before come to his ears. 
Several times, and once, above all, on the ques- 
tion of sliding-seats, he was within an ace of 
exposure. As for the Cigarette, who has rowed 
races in the heat of his blood, but now disowns 
these slips of his wanton youth, his case was 



THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 19 

still more desperate ; for the Royal Nautical pro- 
posed that he should take an oar in one of their 
eights on the morrow, to compare the English 
with the Belgian stroke. I could see my friend 
perspiring in his chair whenever that particular 
topic came up. And there was yet another pro- 
posal which had the same effect on both of us. 
It appeared that the champion canoeist of Europe 
(as well as most other champions) was a Royal 
Nautical Sportsman. And if we would only wait 
until the Sunday, this infernal paddler would be 
so condescending as to accompany us on our next 
stage. Neither of us had the least desire to drive 
the coursers of the sun against Apollo. 

When the young man was gone, we counter- 
manded our candles, and ordered some brandy 
and water. The great billows had gone over 
our head. The Royal Nautical Sportsmen were 
as nice young fellows as a man would wish to 
see, but they were a trifle too young and a thought 
too nautical for us. We began to see that we 
were old and cynical ; we liked ease and the agree- 
able rambling of the human mind about this and 
the other subject; we did not want to disgrace our 
native land by messing at eight, or toiling piti- 
fully in the wake of the champion canoeist. In 
short, we had recourse to flight. It seemed un- 
grateful, but we tried to make that good on a 
card loaded with sincere compliments. And in- 
deed it was no time for scruples ; we seemed to 
feel the hot breath of the champion on our necks. 



AT MAUBEUGE 

Partly from the terror we had of our good 
friends the Royal Nauticals, partly from the 
fact that there were no fewer than fifty-five locks 
between Brussels and Charleroi, we concluded 
that we should travel by train across the frontier, 
boats and all. Fifty-five locks in a day's journey 
was pretty well tantamount to trudging the whole 
distance on foot, with the canoes upon our shoul- 
ders, an object of astonishment to the trees on 
the canal-side, and of honest derision to all right- 
thinking children. 

To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a dif- 
ficult matter for the Arethusa, He is, somehow 
or other, a marked man for the official eye. 
Wherever he journeys, there are the officers 
gathered together. Treaties are solemnly signed, 
foreign ministers, ambassadors, and consuls sit 
throned in state from China to Peru, and the 
union jack flutters on all the winds of heaven. 
Under these safeguards, portly clergymen, school- 
mistresses, gentlemen in grey tweed suits, and 
all the ruck and rabble of British touristry 
pour unhindered, Murray in hand, over the 
railways of the Continent, and yet the slim person 
of the Arethusa is taken in the meshes, while 
these great fish go on their way rejoicing. If 
he travels without a passport, he is cast, without 
any figure about the matter, into noisome dun- 
geons: if his papers are in order, he is suffered 

20 



AT MAUBEUGE 21 

to go his way indeed, but not until he has been 
humiliated by a general incredulity. He is a 
born British subject, yet he has never succeeded 
in persuading a single official of his nationality. 
He flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet 
he is rarely known for anything better than a 
spy, and there is no absurd and disreputable 
means of livelihood but has been attributed to him 
in some heat of official or popular distrust. . . . 

For the life of me I cannot understand it. I, 
too, have been knolled to church and sat at good 
men's feasts, but I bear no mark of it. I am as 
strange as a Jack Indian to their official spec- 
tacles. I might come from any part of the globe, 
it seems, except from where I dor My ancestors 
have labored in vain, and the glorious Constitu- 
tion cannot protect me in my walks abroad. It 
is a great thing, believe me, to present a good 
normal type of the nation you belong to. 

Nobody else was asked for his papers on the 
way to Maubeuge, but I was; and although I 
clung to my rights, I had to choose at last be- 
tween accepting the humiliation and being left 
behind by the train. I was sorry to give way, but 
I wanted to get to Maubeuge. 

Maubeuge is a fortified town with a very good 
inn, the Grand Cerf. It seemed to be inhabited 
principally by soldiers and bagmen ; at least, these 
were all that we saw except the hotel servants. 
We had to stay there some time, for the canoes 
were in no hurry to follow us, and at last stuck 
hopelessly in the custom-house until we went 
back to liberate them. There was nothing to do, 
nothing to see. We had good meals, which was 
a great matter, but that was all. 



22 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

The Cigarette was nearly taken up upon a 
charge of drawing the fortifications : a feat of 
which he was hopelessly incapable. And besides, 
as I suppose each belligerent nation has a plan 
of the other's fortified places already, these pre- 
cautions are of the nature of shutting the stable 
door after the steed is away. But I have no 
doubt they help to keep up a good spirit at home. 
It is a great thing if you can persuade people 
that they are somehow or other partakers in a 
mystery. It makes them feel bigger. Even the 
Freemasons, who have been shown up to satiety, 
preserve a kind of pride; and not a grocer among 
them, however honest, harmless, and empty- 
headed he may feel himself to be at bottom, but 
comes home from one of their cccnacida with a 
portentous significance for himself. 

It is an odd thing how happily two people, if 
there are two, can live in a place where they 
have no acquaintance. I think the spectacle of 
a whole life in which you have no part paralyzes 
personal desire. You are content to become a 
mere spectator. The baker stands in his door; 
the colonel with his three medals goes by to the 
cafe at night; the troops drum and trumpet and 
man the ramparts as bold as so many lions. It 
would task language to say how placidly you 
behold all this. In a place where you have taken 
some root you are provoked out of your indif- 
ference ; you have a hand in the game, — your 
friends are fighting with the army. But in a 
strange town, not small enough to grow too 
soon familiar, nor so large as to have laid itself 
out for travellers, you stand so far apart from 
the business that you positively forget it would 



AT MAUBEUGE 23 

be possible to go nearer ; you have so little human 
interest around you that you do not remember 
yourself to be a man. Perhaps in a very short 
time you would be one no longer. Gymnoso- 
phists go into a wood with all nature seething 
around them, with romance on every side ; it 
would be much more to the purpose if they took 
up their abode in a dull country town where 
they should see just so much of humanity as 
to keep them from desiring more, and only the 
stale externals of man's life. These externals 
are as dead to us as so many formalities, and 
speak a dead language in our eyes and ears. 
They have no more meaning than an oath or a 
salutation. We are so much accustomed to see 
married couples going to church of a Sunday 
that we have clean forgotten what they repre- 
sent; and novelists are driven to rehabilitate 
adultery, no less, when they wish to show us 
what a beautiful thing it is for a man and a 
woman to live for each other. 

One person in Maubeuge, however, showed me 
something more than his outside. That was the 
driver of the hotel omnibus: a mean enough look- 
ing little man, as well as I can remember, but 
with a spark of something human in his soul. He 
had heard of our little journey, and came to me at 
once in envious sympathy. How he longed to 
travel ! he told me. How he longed to be some- 
where else, and see the round world before he 
went into the grave ! " Here I am," said he. 
" I drive to the station. Well. And then I drive 
back again to the hotel. And so on every day 
and all the week round. My God, is that life? " 
I could not say I thought it was — for him. He 



24 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

pressed me to tell him where I had been, and 
where I hoped to go; and as he listened, I declare 
the fellow sighed. Might not this have been 
a brave African traveller, or gone to the Indies 
after Drake? But it is an evil. age for the gipsily 
inclined among men. He who can sit squarest 
on a three-legged stool, he it is who has the 
wealth and glory. 

I wonder if my friend is still driving the omni- 
bus for the Grand Cerf! Not very likely, I be- 
lieve; for I think he was on the eve of mutiny 
when we passed through, and perhaps our pas- 
sage determined him for good. Better a thou- 
sand times that he should be a tramp, and mend 
pots and pans by the wayside, and sleep under 
trees, and see the dawn and the sunset every day 
above a new horizon. I think I hear you say that 
it is a respectable position to drive an omnibus? 
Very well. What right has he who likes it not to 
keep those who would like it dearly out of this 
respectable position? Suppose a dish were not 
to my taste, and you told me that it was a favorite 
among the rest of the company, what should I 
conclude from that? Not to finish the dish 
against my stomach, I suppose. 

Respectability is a very good thing in its way, 
but it does not rise superior to all considerations. 
I would not for a moment venture to hint that 
it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go 
as far as this: that if a position is admittedly 
unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and super- 
fluously useless, although it were as respectable 
as the Church of England, the sooner a man is 
out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED 

TO QUARTES. 

About three in the afternoon the whole estab- 
lishment of the Grand Cerf accompanied us to 
the water's edge. The man of the omnibus was 
there with haggard eyes. Poor cage-bird! Do 
I not remember the time when I myself haunted 
the station, to watch train after train carry its 
complement of freemen into the night, and read 
the names of distant places on the time-bills with 
indescribable longings ? 

We were not clear of the fortifications before 
the rain began. The wind was contrary, and 
blew in furious gusts; nor were the aspects of 
nature any more clement than the doings of the 
sky. For we passed through a blighted country, 
sparsely covered with brush, but handsomely 
enough diversified with factory chimneys. We 
landed in a soiled meadow among some pollards, 
and there smoked a pipe in a flaw of fair weather. 
But the wind blew so hard we could get little 
else to smoke. There were no natural ob- 
jects in the neighborhood, but some sordid 
workshops. A group of children, headed by 
a tall girl, stood and watched us from a little 
distance all the time we stayed. I heartily won- 
der what they thought of us. 

At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable ; 
the landing-place being steep and high, and the 

25 



26 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

launch at a long distance. Near a dozen grimy- 
workmen lent us a hand. They refused any 
reward ; and, what is much better, refused it hand- 
somely, without conveying any sense of insult. 
" It is a way we have in our country-side," said 
they. And a very becoming way it is. In Scot- 
land, where also you will get services for noth- 
ing, the good people reject your money as if you 
had been trying to corrupt a voter. When 
people take the trouble to do dignified acts, it 
is worth while to take a little more, and allow the 
dignity to be common to all concerned. But in 
our brave Saxon countries, where we plod three- 
score years and ten in the mud, and the wind 
keeps singing in our ears from birth to burial, we 
do our good and bad with a high hand and almost 
offensively; and make even our alms a witness- 
bearing and an act of war against the wrong. 

After Hautmont, the sun came forth again 
and the wind went down; and a little paddling 
took us beyond the iron works and through a 
delectable land. The river wound among low 
hills, so that sometimes the sun was at our backs 
and sometimes it stood right ahead, and the river 
before us was one sheet of intolerable glory. On 
either hand meadows and orchards bordered, 
with a margin of sedge and water flowers, upon 
the river. The hedges were of great height, 
woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms; and 
the fields, as they were often very small, looked 
like a series of bowers along the stream. There 
was never any prospect ; sometimes a hill-top with 
its trees would look over the nearest hedgerow, 
just to make a middle distance for the sky; but 
that Was all. The heaven was bare of clouds. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED 27 

The atmosphere, after the rain, was of enchant- 
ing purity. The river doubled among the hill- 
ocks, a shining strip of mirror glass; and the 
dip of the paddles set the flowers shaking along 
the brink. 

In the meadows wandered black and white 
cattle fantastically marked. One beast, with a 
white head and the rest of the body glossy black, 
came to the edge to drink, and stood gravely 
twitching his ears at me as I went by, like some 
sort of preposterous clergyman in a play. A 
moment after I heard a loud plunge, and, turning 
my head, saw the clergyman struggling to shore. 
The bank had given way under his feet. 

Besides the cattle, we saw no living things ex- 
cept a few birds and a great many fishermen. 
These sat along the edges of the meadows, some- 
times with one rod, sometimes with as many as 
half a score. They seemed stupefied with con- 
tentment ; and, when we induced them to ex- 
change a few words with us about the weather, 
their voices sounded quiet and far away. There 
was a strange diversity of opinion among them 
as to the kind of fish for which they set their 
lures ; although they were all agreed in this, that 
the river was abundantly supplied. Where it 
was plain that no two of them had ever caught 
the same kind of fish, we could not help suspect- 
ing that perhaps not any one of them had ever 
caught a fish at all. I hope, since the afternoon 
was so lovely, that they were one and all re- 
warded; and that a silver booty went home in 
every basket for the pot. Some of my friends 
would cry shame on me for this; but I prefer a 
man, were he only an angler, to the bravest pair 



28 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

of gills in all God's waters. I do not affect fishes 
unless when cooked in sauce; whereas an angler 
is an important piece of river scenery, and hence 
deserves some recognition among canoeists. He 
can always tell you wh'ere you are, after a mild 
fashion; and his quiet presence serves to accen- 
tuate the solitude and stillness, and remind you 
of the glittering citizens below your boat. 

The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro 
among his little hills that it was past six before 
we drew near the lock at Quartes. There were 
some children on the tow-path, with whom the 
Cigarette fell into a chaffing talk as they ran 
along beside us. It was in vain that I warned 
him. In vain I told him in English that boys 
were the most dangerous creatures; and if once 
you began with them, it was safe to end in a 
shower of stones. For my own part, whenever 
anything was addressed to me, I smiled gently 
and shook my head, as though I were an in- 
offensive person inadequately acquainted with 
French. For, indeed, I have had such an ex- 
perience at home that I would sooner meet many 
wild animals than a troop of healthy urchins. 

But I was doing injustice to these peaceable 
young Hainaulters. When the Cigarette went off 
to make inquiries, I got out upon the bank to 
smoke a pipe and superintend the boats, and be- 
came at once the centre of much amiable curiosity. 
The children had been joined by this time by a 
young woman and a mild lad who had lost an 
arm ; and this gave me more security. When I let 
slip my first word or so in French, a little girl 
nodded her head with a comical grown-up air. 
" Ah, you see," she said, " he understands well 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED 29 

enough now; he was just making believe." 
And the little group laughed together very good- 
naturedly. 

They were much impressed when they heard 
we came from England; and the little girl prof- 
fered the information that England was an 
island " and a far way from here — bien loin 
d'ici." 

" Ay, you may say that, a far way from 
here," said the lad with one arm. 

I was nearly as homesick as ever I was in my 
life; they seemed to make it such an incalculable 
distance to the place where I first saw the day. 

They admired the canoes very much. And 
I observed one piece of delicacy in these chil- 
dren which is worthy of record. They had been 
deafening us for the last hundred yards with 
petitions for a sail; ay, and they deafened us 
to the same tune next morning when we came 
to start, but then, when the canoes w 7 ere lying 
empty, there was no word of any such petition. 
Delicacy? or perhaps a bit of fear for the water 
in so crank a vessel? I hate cynicism a great 
deal worse than I do the devil; unless perhaps, 
the two were the same thing? And yet 'tis a 
good tonic; the cold tub and bath-towel of the 
sentiments; and positively necessary to life in 
cases of advanced sensibility. 

From the boats they turned to my costume. 
They could not make enough of my red sash; 
and my knife filled them with awe. 

' They make them like that in England," said 
the boy with one arm. I was glad he did not 
know how badly we make them in England now- 
adays. " They are for people who go away to 



30 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

sea," he added, " and to defend one's life against 
great fish." 

I felt I was becoming a more and more ro- 
mantic figure to the little group at every word. 
And so I suppose I was. Even my pipe, al- 
though it was an ordinary French clay, pretty 
well " trousered," as they call it, would have a 
rarity in their eyes, as a thing coming from so 
far away. And if my feathers were not very 
fine in themselves, they were all from over 
seas. One thing in my outfit, however, tickled 
them out of all politeness; and that was the be- 
mired condition of my canvas shoes. I suppose 
they were sure the mud at any rate was a home 
product. The little girl (who was the genius 
of the party) displayed her own sabots in compe- 
tition; and I wish you could have seen how 
gracefully and merrily she did it. 

The young woman's milk-can, a great amphora 
of hammered brass, stood some way off upon 
the sward. I was glad of an opportunity to 
divert public attention from myself and return 
some of the compliments I had received. So I 
admired it cordially both for form and color, 
telling them, and very truly, that it was as 
beautiful as gold. They were not surprised. 
The things were plainly the boast of the coun- 
try-side. And the children expatiated on the 
costliness of these amphorse, which sell some- 
times as high as thirty francs apiece, told 
me how they were carried on donkeys, one on 
either side of the saddle, a brave caparison in 
themselves ; and how they were to be seen all over 
the district, and at the larger farms in great num- 
ber and of great size. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 
We are Pedlars. 

The Cigarette returned with good news. 
There were beds to be had some ten minutes' 
walk from where we were, at a place called 
Pont. We stowed the canoes in a granary, and 
asked among the children for a guide. The 
circle at once widened round us, and our offers 
of reward were received in dispiriting silence. 
We were plainly a pair of Bluebeards to the 
children; they might speak to us in public places, 
and where they had the advantage of numbers; 
but it was another thing to venture off alone 
with two uncouth and legendary characters, who 
had dropped from the clouds upon their hamlet 
this quiet afternoon, sashed and beknived, and 
with a flavor of great voyages. The owner of 
the granary came to our assistance, singled out 
one little fellow, and threatened him with cor- 
poralities; or I suspect we should have had to 
find the way for ourselves. As it was, he was 
more frightened at the granary man than the 
strangers, having perhaps had some experience 
of the former. But I fancy his little heart must 
have been going at a fine rate, for he kept trot- 
ting at a respectful distance in front, and looking 
back at us with scared eyes. Not otherwise may 
the children of the young world have guided 

31 



32 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Jove or one of his Olympian compeers on an 
adventure. 

A miry lane led us up from Quartes, with 
its church and bickering wind-mill. The hinds 
were trudging homewards from the fields. A 
brisk little old woman passed us by. She was 
seated across a donkey between a pair of glitter- 
ing milk-cans, and, as she went, she kicked 
jauntily with her heels upon the donkey's side, 
and scattered shrill remarks among the wayfar- 
ers. It was notable that none of the tired men 
took the trouble to reply. Our conductor soon 
led us out of the lane and across country. The 
sun had gone down, but the west in front of us 
was one lake of level gold. The path wandered 
awhile in the open, and then passed under a trel- 
lis like a bower indefinitely prolonged. On either 
hand were shadowy orchards; cottages lay low 
among the leaves and sent their smoke to heaven ; 
every here and there, in an opening, appeared 
the great gold face of the west. 

I never saw the Cigarette in such an idyllic 
frame of mind. He waxed positively lyrical in 
praise of country scenes. I was little less exhila- 
rated myself; the mild air of the evening, the 
shadows, the rich lights, and the silence made a 
symphonious accompaniment about our walk; 
and we both determined to avoid towns for the 
future and sleep in hamlets. 

At last the path went between two houses, 
and turned the party out into a wide, muddy 
high-road, bordered, as far as the eye could reach 
on either hand, by an unsightly village. The 
houses stood well back, leaving a ribbon of waste 
land on either side of the road, where there were 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 33 

stacks of firewood, carts, barrows, rubbish heaps, 
and a little doubtful grass. Away on the left, 
a gaunt tower stood in the middle of the street. 
What it had been in past ages I know not : prob- 
ably a hold in time of war; but nowadays it bore 
an illegible dial-plate in its upper parts, and near 
the bottom an iron letter-box. 

The inn to which we had been recommended 
at Quartes was full, or else the landlady did 
not like our looks. I ought to say, that with our 
long, damp india-rubber bags, we presented rather 
a doubtful type of civilization: like the rag-and- 
bone men, the Cigarette imagined. " These 
gentlemen are pedlars ? — Ces messieurs sont des 
marchands?" — asked the landlady. And then, 
without waiting for an answer, which I suppose 
she thought superfluous in so plain a case, 
recommended us tp*a butcher who lived hard by 
the tower and took in travellers to lodge. 

Thither went we. But the butcher was flit- 
ting, and all his beds were taken down. Or else 
he didn't like our looks. As a parting shot, we 
had, " These gentlemen are pedlars?" 

It began to grow dark in earnest. We could 
no longer distinguish the faces of the people 
who passed us by with an inarticulate good-even- 
ing. And the householders of Pont seemed very 
economical with their oil, for we saw not a 
single window lighted in all that long village. 
I believe it is the longest village in the world; 
but I dare say in our predicament every pace 
counted three times over. We were much cast 
down when we came to the last auberge, and, look- 
ing in at the dark door, asked timidly if we could 
sleep there for the night. A female voice as- 



34 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

sented, in no very friendly tones. We clapped 
the bags down and found our way to chairs. 

The place was in total darkness, save a red 
glow in the chinks and ventilators of the stove. 
But now the landlady lit a lamp to see her new 
guests; I suppose the darkness was what saved 
us another expulsion, for I cannot say she 
looked gratified at our appearance. We were 
in a large, bare apartment, adorned with two 
allegorical prints of Music and Painting, and 
a copy of the Law against Public Drunkenness. 
On one side there was a bit of a bar, with some 
half-a-dozen bottles. Two laborers sat waiting 
supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness; a 
plain-looking lass bustled about with a sleepy 
child of two, and the landlady began to derange 
the pots upon the stove and set some beefsteak to 
grill. • 

" These gentlemen are pedlars ? " she asked 
sharply ; and that was all the conversation forth- 
coming. We began to think we might be ped- 
lars, after all. I never knew a population with 
so narrow a range of conjecture as the inn-keep- 
ers of Pont-sur-Sambre. But manners and bear- 
ing have not a wider currency than bank-notes. 
You have only to get far enough out of your 
beat, and all your accomplished airs will go for 
nothing. These Hainaulters could see no differ- 
ence between us and the average pedlar. Indeed, 
we had some grounds for reflection while the 
steak was getting ready, to see how perfectly 
they accepted us at their own valuation, and 
how our best politeness and best efforts at enter- 
tainment seemed to fit quite suitably with the 
character of packmen. At least it seemed a good 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 35 

account of the profession in France, that even 
before such judges we could not beat them at 
our own weapons. 

At last we were called to table. The two 
hinds (and one of them looked sadly worn and 
white in the face, as though sick with over- work 
and under-feeding) supped off a single plate 
of some sort of bread-berry, some potatoes in 
their jackets, a small cup of coffee sweetened 
with sugar candy, and one tumbler of swipes. 
The landlady, her son, and the lass aforesaid 
took the same. Our meal was quite a banquet 
by comparison. We had some beefsteak, not 
so tender as it might have been, some of the 
potatoes, some cheese, an extra glass of swipes, 
and white sugar in our coffee. 

You see what it is to be a gentleman, — I 
beg your pardon, what it is to be a pedlar. It 
had not before occurred to me that a pedlar was 
a great man in a laborer's alehouse ; but now that 
I had to enact the part for the evening, I found 
that so it was. He has in his hedge quarters 
somewhat the same pre-eminency as the man 
who takes a private parlor in a hotel. The more 
you look into it the more infinite are the class 
distinctions among men; and possibly, by a 
happy dispensation there is no one at all at the bot- 
tom of the scale; no one but can find some su- 
periority over somebody else, to keep up his 
pride withal. 

We were displeased enough with our fare. 
Particularly the Cigarette; for I tried to make 
believe that I was amused with the adventure, 
tough beefsteak and all. According to the Lu- 
cretian maxim, our steak should hav-e been fla- 



36 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

vored by the look of the other people's bread- 
berry ; but we did not find it so in practice. You 
may have a head knowledge that other people 
live more poorly than yourself, but it is not 
agreeable — I was going to say, it is against the 
etiquette of the universe — to sit at the same 
table and pick your own superior diet from 
among their crusts. I had not seen such a thing 
done since the greedy boy at school with his 
birthday cake. It was odious enough to witness, 
I could remember; and I had never thought to 
play the part myself. But there, again, you see 
what it is to be a pedlar. 

There is no doubt that the poorer classes in 
our country are much more charitably disposed 
than their superiors in wealth. And I fancy it 
must arise a great deal from the comparative 
indistinction of the easy and the not so easy in 
these ranks. A workman or a pedlar cannot 
shutter himself off from his less comfortable 
neighbors. If he treats himself to a luxury, he 
must do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. 
And what should more directly lead to charitable 
thoughts ? . . . Thus the poor man, camping out 
in life, sees it as it is, and knows that every 
mouthful he puts in his belly has been wrenched 
out of the fingers of the hungry. 

But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a bal- 
loon ascent, the fortunate person passes through 
a zone of clouds, and sublunary matters are 
thenceforward hidden from his view. He sees 
nothing but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable 
order and positively as good as new. He finds 
himself surrounded in the most touching manner 
by the attentions of Providence, and compares 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 37 

himself involuntarily with the lilies and the sky- 
larks. He does not precisely sing, of course; 
but then he looks so unassuming in his open 
Landau! If all the world dined at one table, 
this philosophy would meet with some rude 
knocks. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 
The Travelling Merchant. 

Like the lackeys in Moliere's farce, when the 
true nobleman broke in on their high life below 
stairs, we were destined to be confronted with 
a real pedlar. To make the lesson still more 
poignant for fallen gentlemen like us, he was a 
pedlar of infinitely more consideration than the 
sort of scurvy fellows we were taken for; like 
a lion among mice, or a ship of war bearing down 
upon two cock-boats. Indeed, he did not deserve 
the name of pedlar at all; he was a travelling 
merchant. 

I suppose it was about half -past eight when 
this worthy, Monsieur Hector Gilliard, of Mau- 
beuge, turned up at the alehouse door in a tilt 
cart drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on 
the inhabitants. He was a lean, nervous flibber- 
tigibbet of a man, with something the look of 
an actor and something the look of a horse 
jockey. He had evidently prospered without 
any of the favors of education, for he adhered 
with stern simplicity to the masculine gender, and 
in the course of the evening passed off some fancy 
futures in a very florid style of architecture. With 
him came his wife, a comely young woman, with 
her hair tied in a yellow kerchief, and their son, a 
little fellow of four, in a blouse and military kepi. 
It was notable that the child was many degrees 

38 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 39 

better dressed than either of the parents. We 
were informed he was already at a boarding- 
school; but the holidays having just commenced, 
he was off to spend them with his parents on a 
cruise. An enchanting holiday occupation, was 
it not ? to travel all day with father and mother in 
the tilt cart full of countless treasures ; the green 
country rattling by on either side, and the chil- 
dren in all the villages contemplating him with 
envy and wonder. It is better fun, during the 
holidays, to be the son of a travelling merchant, 
than son and heir to the greatest cotton spinner 
in creation. And as for being a reigning prince, 
— indeed, I never saw one if it was not Master 
Gilliard! 

Whije M. Hector and the son of the house 
were putting up the donkey and getting all the 
valuables under lock and key, the landlady 
warmed up the remains of our beefsteak and 
fried the cold potatoes in slices, and Madame 
Gilliard set herself to waken the boy, who had 
come far that day, and was peevish and dazzled 
by the light. He was no sooner awake than he 
began to prepare himself for supper by eating 
galette, unripe pears, and cold potatoes, with, 
so far as I could judge, positive benefit to his 
appetite. 

The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, 
awoke her own little girl, and the two children 
were confronted. Master Gilliard looked at her 
for a moment, very much as a dog looks at his 
own reflection in a mirror before he turns away. 
He was at that time absorbed in the galette. His 
mother seemed crestfallen that he should dis- 
play so little inclination towards the other sex, 



40 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

and expressed her disappointment with some 
candor and a very proper reference to the influ- 
ence of years. 

Sure enough a time will come when he will 
pay more attention to the girls, and think a 
great deal less of his mother; let us hope she 
will like it as well as she seemed to fancy. But 
it is odd enough; the very women who profess 
most contempt for mankind as a sex seem to find 
even its ugliest particulars rather lively and high- 
minded in their own sons. 

The little girl looked longer and with more 
interest, probably because she was in her own 
house, while he was a traveller and accustomed 
to strange sights. And, besides, there was no 
galette in the case with her. 

All the time of supper there was nothing- 
spoken of but my young lord. The two parents 
were both absurdly fond of their child. Mon- 
sieur kept insisting on his sagacity; how he knew 
all the children at school by name, and when this 
utterly failed on trial, how he was cautious and 
exact to a strange degree, and if asked anything, 
he would sit and think — and think, and if he 
did not know it, " my faith, he wouldn't tell 
you at all — ma foi, il ne vous le dira pas/' 
Which is certainly a very high degree of caution. 
At intervals, M. Hector would appeal to his wife, 
with his mouth full of beefsteak, as to the little 
fellow's age at such or such a time when he had 
said or done something memorable ; and I noticed 
that Madame usually poohpoohed these inquiries. 
She herself was not boastful in her vein; but 
she never had her fill of caressing the child; 
and she seemed to take a gentle pleasure in re- 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 41 

calling all that was fortunate in his little exist- 
ence. No school-boy could have talked more of 
the holidays which were just beginning and less 
of the black school-time which must inevitably 
follow after. She showed, with a pride perhaps 
partly mercantile in origin, his pockets preposter- 
ously swollen with tops, and whistles, and string. 
When she called at a house in the way of busi- 
ness, it appeared he kept her company; and, 
whenever a sale was made, received a sou out 
of the profit. Indeed, they spoiled him vastly, 
these two good people. But they had an eye to 
his manners, for all that, and reproved him for 
some little faults in breeding which occurred 
from time to time during supper. 

On the whole, I was not much hurt at being 
taken for a pedlar. I might think that I ate 
with greater delicacy, or that my mistakes in 
French belonged to a different order ; but it was 
plain that these distinctions would be thrown 
away upon the landlady and the two laborers. 
In all essential things we and the Gilliards cut 
very much the same figure in the alehouse 
kitchen. M. Hector was more at home, indeed, 
and took a higher tone with the world ; but that 
was explicable on the ground of his driving a don- 
key-cart, while we poor bodies tramped afoot. I 
dare say the rest of the company thought us dying 
with envy, though in no ill sense, to be as far up 
in the profession as the new arrival. 

And of one thing I am sure; that every one 
thawed and became more humanized and con- 
versible as soon as these innocent people appeared 
upon the scene. I would not very readily trust 
the travelling merchant >vith any extravagant 



42 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

sum of money, but I am sure his heart was in 
the right place. In this mixed world, if you 
can find one or two sensible places in a man; 
above all, if you should find a whole family living 
together on such pleasant terms, you may surely 
be satisfied, and take the rest for granted; or, 
what is a great deal better, boldly make up your 
mind that you can do perfectly well without the 
rest, and that ten thousand bad traits cannot make 
a single good one any the less good. ■ 

It was getting late. M. Hector lit a stable 
lantern and went off to his cart for some arrange- 
ments, and my young gentleman proceeded to 
divest himself of the better part of his raiment 
and play gymnastics on his mother's lap, and 
thence on to the floor, with Accompaniment of 
laughter. 

" Are you going to sleep alone ? " asked the 
servant lass. 

" There's little fear of that/' says Master Gil- 
Hard. 

" You sleep alone at school," objected his 
mother. " Come, come, you must be a man." 

But he protested that school was a different 
matter from the holidays ; that there were dormi- 
tories at school, and silenced the discussion with 
kisses, his mother smiling, no one better pleased 
than she. 

There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little 
fear that he should sleep alone, for there was 
but one bed for the trio. We, on our part, had 
firmly protested against one man's accommoda- 
tion for two; and we had a double-bedded pen 
in the loft of the house, furnished, beside the 
beds, with exactly three hat pegs and one table. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 43 

There was not so much as a glass of water. 
But the window would open, by good fortune. 

Some time before I fell asleep the loft was 
full of the sound of mighty snoring; the Gil- 
liards, and the laborers, and the people of the 
inn, all at it, I suppose, with one consent. The 
young moon outside shone very clearly over 
Pont-sur-Sambre, and down upon the alehouse 
where all we pedlars were abed. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED 
To Landrecies. 

In the morning, when we came down-stairs 
the landlady pointed out to us two pails of water 
behind the street door. " Voila de Veau pour 
vous debarb outlier" says she. And so there we 
made a shift to wash ourselves, while Madame 
Gilliard brushed the family boots on the outer 
doorstep, and M. Hector, whistling cheerily, ar- 
ranged some small goods for the day's campaign 
in a portable chest of drawers, which formed a 
part of his baggage. Meanwhile the child was 
letting off Waterloo crackers all over the floor. 

I wonder, by the way, what they call Water- 
loo crackers in France; Perhaps Austerlitz 
crackers. There is a great deal in the point of 
view. Do you remember the Frenchman who, 
travelling by way of Southampton, was put down 
in Waterloo Station, and had to drive across 
Waterloo Bridge? He had a mind to go home 
again, it seems. 

Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is 
ten minutes' walk from Quartes by dry land, 
it is six weary kilometres by water. We left our 
bags at the inn and walked to our canoes through 
the wet orchards unencumbered. Some of the 
children were there to see us off, but we were 
no longer the mysterious beings of the night be- 
fore. A departure is much less romantic than 

44 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED 45 

an unexplained arrival in the golden evening. 
Although we might be greatly taken at a ghost's 
first appearance, we should behold him vanish with 
comparative equanimity. 

The good folks of the inn at Pont, when we 
called there for the bags, were overcome with 
marvelling. At the sight of these two dainty 
little boats, with a fluttering union jack on each, 
and all the varnish shining from the sponge, 
they began to perceive that they had entertained 
angels unawares. The landlady stood upon the 
bridge, probably lamenting she had charged so 
little; the son ran to and fro, and called out the 
neighbors to enjoy the sight; and we paddled 
away from quite a crowd of rapt observers. 
These gentlemen pedlars, indeed! Now you see 
their quality too late. 

The whole day was showery, with occasional 
drenching plumps. We were soaked to the skin, 
then partially dried in the sun, then soaked once 
more. But there were some calm intervals, and 
one notably, when we were skirting the forest of 
Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place 
most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked 
solemn along the river-side, drooping its boughs 
into the water, and piling them up aloft into 
a wall of leaves. What is a forest but a 
city of nature's own, full of hardy and innocuous 
living things, where there is nothing dead and 
nothing made with the hands, but the citizens 
themselves are the houses and public monuments ? 
There is nothing so much alive and yet so quiet 
as a woodland ; and a pair of people, swinging 
past in canoes, feel very small and bustling by 
comparison. 



46 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

And surely, of all smells in the world the smell 
of many trees is the sweetest and most fortify- 
ing. The sea has a rude pistolling sort of odor, 
that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and 
carries with it a fine sentiment of open water 
and tall ships; but the smell of a forest, which 
comes nearest to this in tonic quality, surpasses 
it by many degrees in the quality of softness. 
Again, the smell of the sea has little variety, but 
the smell of a forest is infinitely changeful; it 
varies with the hour of the day, not in strength 
merely, but in character; and the different sorts 
of trees, as you go from one zone of the wood 
to another, seem to live among different kinds 
of atmosphere. Usually the rosin of the fir pre- 
dominates. But some woods are more coquet- 
tish in* their habits; and the breath of the forest 
Mormal, as it came aboard upon us that showery 
afternoon, was perfumed with nothing less deli- 
cate than sweetbrier. 

I wish our way had always lain among woods. 
Trees are the most civil society. An old oak 
that has been growing where he stands since 
before the Reformation, taller than many spires, 
more stately than the greater part of mountains, 
and yet a living thing, liable to sicknesses and 
death, like you and me: is not that in itself a 
speaking lesson in history ? But acres on acres 
full of such patriarchs contiguously rooted, their 
green tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart 
younglings pushing up about their knees ; a whole 
forest, healthy and beautiful, giving color to the 
light, giving perfume to the air; what is this but 
the most imposing piece in nature's repertory? 
Heine wished to lie like Merlin under the oaks 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED 47 

of Broceliande. I should not be satisfied with 
one tree; but if the wood grew together like a 
banyan grove, I would be buried under the tap- 
root of the whole; my parts should circulate 
from oak to oak; and my consciousness should 
be diffused abroad in all the forest, and give a 
common heart to that assembly of green spires, 
so that it, also, might rejoice in its own loveli- 
ness and dignity. I think I feel a thousand 
squirrels leaping from bough to bough in my 
vast mausoleum; and the birds and the winds 
merrily coursing over its uneven, leafy sur- 
face. 

Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little 
bit of a wood, and it was but for a little way that 
we skirted by its boundaries. And the rest of 
the time the rain kept coming in squirts and the 
wind in squalls, until one's heart grew weary 
of such fitful, scolding weather. It was odd 
how the showers began when we had to carry 
the boats over a lock and must expose our legs. 
They always did. This is a sort of thing that 
readily begets a personal feeling against nature. 
There seems no reason why the shower should 
not come five minutes before or five minutes after, 
unless you suppose an intention to affront you. 
The Cigarette had a mackintosh which put him 
more or less above these contrarieties. But I 
had to bear the brunt uncovered. I began to 
remember that nature was a woman. My com- 
panion, in a rosier temper, listened with great 
satisfaction to my jeremiads, and ironically con- 
curred. He instanced, as a cognate matter, the 
action of the tides, " which," said he, " was alto- 
gether designed for the confusion of canoeists, 



48 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

except in so far as it was calculated to minister 
to a barren vanity on the part of the moon." 

At the last lock, some little way out of Lan- 
drecies, I refused to go any farther; and sat in 
a drift of rain by the side of the bank, to have a 
reviving pipe. A vivacious old man, whom I 
took to have been the devil, drew near, and ques- 
tioned me about our journey. In the fulness of 
my heart I laid bare our plans before him. He 
said it was the silliest enterprise that ever he heard 
of. Why, did I not know, he asked me, that it 
was nothing but locks, locks, locks, the whole 
way? not to mention that, at this season of the 
year, we should find the Oise quite dry? " Get 
into a train, my little young man/' said he, " and 
go you away home to your parents." I was so 
astounded at the man's malice that I could only 
stare at him in silence. A tree would never have 
spoken to me like this. At last I got out with 
some words. We had come from Antwerp al- 
ready, I told him, which was a good long way; 
and we should do the rest in spite of him. Yes, 
I said, if there were no other reason, 1 would do 
it now, just because he had dared to say we could 
not. The pleasant old gentleman looked at me 
sneeringly, made an allusion to my canoe, and 
marched off wagging his head. 

I was still inwardly fuming when up came 
a pair of young fellows, who imagined I was the 
Cigarette's servant, on a comparison, I suppose, of 
my bare Jersey with the other's mackintosh, and 
asked me many questions about my place and my 
master's character. I said he was a good enough 
fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the head. 
" Oh, no, no," said one, " you must not say that; 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED 49 

it is not absurd; it is very courageous of him." 
I believe these were a couple of angels sent to 
give me heart again. It was truly mortifying 
to reproduce all the old man's insinuations, as 
if they were original to me in my character of 
a malcontent footman, and have them brushed 
away like so many flies by these admirable young 
men. 

When I accounted this affair to the Cigarette, 
" They must have a curious idea of how English 
servants behave," says he, drily, " for you treated 
me like a brute beast at the lock/' 

I was a good deal mortified; but my temper 
had suffered, it is a fact. 



AT LANDRECIES 

At Landrecies the rain still fell and the wind 
still blew; but we found a double-bedded room 
with plenty of furniture, real water- jugs with 
real water in them, and dinner, a real dinner, 
not innocent of real wine. After having been 
a pedlar for one night, and a butt for the elements 
during the whole of the next day, these comfort- 
able circumstances fell on my heart like sun- 
shine. There was an English fruiterer at din- 
ner, travelling with a Belgian fruiterer; in the 
evening at the cafe we watched our compatriot 
drop a good deal of money at corks, and I don't 
know why, but this pleased us. 

It turned out that we were to see more of 
Landrecies than we expected; for the weather 
next day was simply bedlamite. It is not the 
place one would have chosen for a day's rest, 
for it consists almost entirely of fortifications. 
Within the ramparts, a few blocks of houses, a 
long row of barracks, and a church figure, with 
what countenance they may, as the town. There 
seems to be no trade, and a shop-keeper from 
whom I bought a sixpenny flint and steel was so 
much affected that he filled my pockets with 
spare flints into the bargain. The only public 
buildings that had any interest for us were the 
hotel and the cafe. But we visited the church. 
There lies Marshal Clarke. But as neither of 

50 



AT LANDRECIES 51 

us had ever heard of that military hero, we bore 
the associations of the spot with fortitude. 

As in all garrison towns, guard-calls, and reveil- 
les, and such like, make a fine, romantic interlude 
in civic business. Bugles, and drums, and fifes 
are of themselves most excellent things in nature, 
and when they carry the mind to marching armies 
and the picturesque vicissitudes of war they stir 
up something proud in the heart. But in a 
shadow of a town like Landrecies, with little else 
moving, these points of war made a proportion- 
ate commotion. Indeed, they were the only 
things to remember. It was just the place to 
hear the round going by at night in the darkness, 
with the solid tramp of men marching, and the 
startling reverberations of the drum. It re- 
minded you that even this place was a point 
in the great warfaring system of Europe, and 
might on some future day be ringed about with 
cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a 
name among strong towns. 

The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice 
and notable physiological effect, nay, even from 
its cumbrous and comical shape, stands alone 
among the instruments of noise. And if it be 
true, as I have heard it said, that drums are 
covered with asses' skin, what a picturesque 
irony is there in that! As if this long-suffering 
animal's hide had not been sufficiently belabored 
during life, now by Lyonnese costermongers, 
now by presumptuous Hebrew prophets, it must 
be stripped from his poor hinder quarters after 
death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night 
after night round the streets of every garrison 
town in Europe. And up the heights of Alma 



52 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

and Spicheren, and wherever death has his red 
flag a-flying, and sounds his own potent tuck 
upon the cannons, there also must the drummer 
boy, hurrying with white face over fallen com- 
rades, batter and bemaul this slip of skin from 
the loins of peaceable donkeys. 

Generally a, man is never more uselessly em- 
ployed than when he is at this trick of bastinado- 
ing asses' hide. We know what effect it has in 
life, and how your dull ass will not mend his 
pace with beating. But in this state of mummy 
and melancholy survival of itself, when the hol- 
low skin reverberates to the drummer's wrist, 
and each dub-a-dub goes direct to a man's heart, 
and puts madness there, and that disposition of 
the pulses which we, in our big way of talking, 
nickname Heroism, — is there not something in 
the nature of a revenge upon the donkey's per- 
secutors? Of old, he might say, you drubbed 
me up hill and down dale and I must endure; 
but now that I am dead those dull thwacks that 
were scarcely audible in country lanes have be- 
come stirring music in front of the brigade, and 
for every blow that you lay on my old great- 
coat, you will see a comrade stumble and fall. 

Not long after the drums had passed the cafe, 
the Cigarette and the Arethnsa began to grow 
sleepy, and set out for the hotel, which was only 
a door or two away. But although we had been 
somewhat indifferent to Landrecies, Landrecies 
had not been indifferent to us. All day, we 
learned, people had been running out between 
the squalls to visit our two boats. Hundreds of 
persons, so said report, although it fitted ill with 
our idea of the town, — hundreds of persons had 



AT LANDRECIES 53 

inspected them where they lay in a coal-shed. 
We were becoming lions in Landrecies, who had 
been only pedlars the night before in Pont. 

And now, when we left the cafe, we were pur- 
sued and overtaken at the hotel door by no less 
a person than the Juge de Paix ; a functionary, as 
far as I can make out, of the character of a 
Scotch Sheriff Substitute. He gave us his card 
and invited us to sup with him on the spot, very 
neatly, very gracefully, as Frenchmen can do 
these things. It was for the credit of Landre- 
cies, said he ; and although we knew very well 
how little credit we could do the place, we must 
have been churlish fellows to refuse an invita- 
tion so politely introduced. 

The house of the judge was close by; it was 
a well-appointed bachelor's establishment, with 
a curious collection of old brass warming-pans 
upon the walls. Some of these were most elab- 
orately carved. It seemed a picturesque idea for 
a collector. You could not help thinking how 
many night-caps had wagged over these warm- 
ing-pans in past generations; what jests may 
have been made and kisses taken while they were 
in service; and how often they had been use- 
lessly paraded in the bed of death. If they could 
only speak, at what absurd, indecorous, and 
tragical scenes had they not been present? 

The wine was excellent. When we made the 
judge our compliments upon a bottle, " I do not 
give it you as my worst," said he. I wonder 
when Englishmen will learn these hospitable 
graces. They are worth learning; they set off 
life and make ordinary moments ornamental. 

There were two other Landrecienses present. 



54 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

One was the collector of something or other, 
I forget what; the other, we were told, was the 
principal notary of the place. So it happened 
that we all five more or less followed the law. 
At this rate, the talk was pretty certain to be- 
come technical. The Cigarette expounded the 
poor laws very magisterially. And a little later 
I found myself laying down the Scotch law of 
illegitimacy, of which I am glad to say I know 
nothing. The collector and the notary, who were 
both married men, accused the judge, who was 
a bachelor, of having started the subject. He 
deprecated the charge, with a conscious, pleased 
air, just like all the men I have ever seen, be 
they French or English. How strange that we 
should all, in our unguarded moments, rather 
like to be thought a bit of a rogue with the 
women ! 

As the evening went on the wine grew more 
to my taste; the spirits proved better than the 
wine; the company was congenial. This was 
the highest water mark of popular favor on the 
whole cruise. After all, being in a judge's house, 
was there not something semi-official in the 
tribute? And so, remembering what a great 
country France is, we did full justice to our en- 
tertainment. Landrecies had been a long while 
asleep before we returned to the hotel; and the 
sentries on the ramparts were already looking 
for daybreak. 



SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 
Canal Boats. 

Next day we made a late start in the rain. 
The judge politely escorted us to the end of the 
lock under an umbrella. We had now brought 
ourselves to a pitch of humility, in the matter of 
weather, not often attained except in the Scotch 
Highlands. A rag of blue sky or a glimpse of 
sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the 
rain was not heavy we counted the day almost 
fair. 

Long lines of barges lay one after another 
along the canal, many of them looking mighty 
spruce and shipshape in their jerkin of Archangel 
tar picked out with white and green. Some car- 
ried gay iron railings and quite a parterre of 
flower-pots. Children played on the decks, as 
heedless of the rain as if they had been brought 
up on Loch Caron side; men fished over the 
gunwale, some of them under umbrellas ; women 
did their washing; and every barge boasted its 
mongrel cur by way of watch-dog. Each one 
barked furiously at the canoes, running along- 
side until he had got to the end of his own ship, 
and so passing on the word to the dog aboard the 
next. We must have seen something like a hun- 
dred of these embarkations in the course of that 
day's paddle, ranged one after another like the 
houses in a street ; and from not one of them were 

55 



56 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

we disappointed of this accompaniment. It was 
like visiting a menagerie, the Cigarette remarked. 

These little cities by the canal-side had a very 
odd effect upon the mind. They seemed, with 
their flower-pots and smoking chimneys, their 
washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature in 
the scene; and yet if only the canal below were 
to open, one junk after another would hoist sail 
or harness horses and swim away into all parts of 
France; and the impromptu hamlet would sep- 
arate, house by house, to the four winds. The 
children who played together to-day by the Sam- 
bre and Oise Canal, each at his own father's 
threshold, when and where might they next meet ? 

For some time past the subject of barges had 
occupied a great deal of our talk, and we had pro- 
jected an old age on the canals of Europe. It 
was to be the most leisurely of progresses, now 
on a swift river at the tail of a steamboat, now 
waiting horses for days together on some incon- 
siderable junction. We should be seen pottering 
on deck in all the dignity of years, our white 
beards falling into our laps. We were ever to 
be busied among paint-pots, so that there should 
be no white fresher and no green more emerald 
than ours, in all the navy of the canals. There 
should be books in the cabin, and tobacco jars, and 
some old Burgundy as red as a November sun- 
set and as odorous as a violet in April. There 
should be a flageolet whence the Cigarette, with 
cunning touch, should draw melting music under 
the stars; or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise 
his voice — somewhat thinner than of yore, and 
with here and there a quaver, or call it a natural 
grace note — in rich and solemn psalmody. 



SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 57 

All this simmering in my mind set me wishing 
to go aboard one of these ideal houses of loun- 
ging. I had plenty to choose from, as I coasted 
one after another and the dogs bayed at me for a 
vagrant. At last I saw a nice old man and his 
wife looking at me with some interest, so I gave 
them good-day and pulled up alongside. I be- 
gan with a remark upon their dog, which had 
somewhat the look of a pointer ; thence I slid into 
a compliment on Madame's flowers, and thence 
into a word in praise of their way of life. 

If you ventured on such an experiment in 
England you would get a slap in the face at once. 
The life would be shown to be a vile one, not 
without a side shot at your better fortune. Now, 
what I like so much in France is the clear, un- 
flinching recognition by everybody of his own 
luck. They all know on which side their bread is 
buttered, and take a pleasure in showing it to 
others, which is surely the better part of religion. 
And they scorn to make a poor mouth over their 
poverty, which I take to be the better part of man- 
liness. I have heard a woman in quite a better 
position at home, with a good bit of money in 
hand, refer to her own child with a horrid whine 
as " a poor man's child." I would not say such 
a thing to the Duke of Westminster. And the 
French are full of this spirit of independence. 
Perhaps it is the result of republican institutions, 
as they call them. Much more likely it is because 
there are so few people really poor that the 
whiners are not enough to keep each other in 
countenance. 

The people on the barge were delighted to hear 
that I admired their state. They understood 



58 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

perfectly well, they told me, how Monseiur envied 
them. Without doubt Monsieur was rich, and in 
that case he might make a canal boat as pretty 
as a villa — joli comme un chateau. And with 
that they invited me on board their own water 
villa. They apologized for their cabin ; they had 
not been rich enough to make it as it ought to be. 

" The fire should have been here, at this side," 
explained the husband. " Then one might have 
a writing-table in the middle — books — and " 
(comprehensively) " all. It would be quite co- 
quettish — ga serait tout-a-fait coquet. " And 
he looked about him as though the improvements 
were already made. It was plainly not the first 
time that he had thus beautified his cabin in 
imagination; and when next he makes a hit, I 
should expect to see the writing-table in the mid- 
dle. 

Madame had three birds in a cage. They were 
no great thing, she explained. Fine birds were 
so dear. They had sought to get a Hollandais 
last winter in Rouen (Rouen, thought I; and is 
this whole mansion, with its dogs, and birds, and 
smoking chimneys, so far a traveller as that, and 
as homely an object among the cliffs and or- 
chards of the Seine as on the green plains of 
Sambre?) — they had sought to get a Hollandais 
last winter in Rouen ; but these cost fifteen francs 
apiece — picture it — fifteen francs ! 

" Pour un tout petit oiseau — For quite a little 
bird," added the husband. 

As I continued to admire, the apologetics died 
away, and the good people began to brag of their 
barge and their happy condition in life, as if they 
had been Emperor and Empress of the Indies. It 



SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 59 

was, in the Scotch phrase, a good hearing, and 
put me in good-humor with the world. If people 
knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear a man 
boasting, so long as he boasts of what he really 
has, I believe they would do it more freely and 
with a better grace. 

They began to ask about our voyage. You 
should have seen how they sympathized. They 
seemed half ready to give up their barge and fol- 
low us. But these canaletti are only gipsies semi- 
domesticated. The semi-domestication came out 
in rather a pretty form. Suddenly Madame's 
brow darkened. " Cependant," she began, and 
then stopped ; and then began again by asking me 
if I were single. 

"Yes," said I. 

" And your friend who went by just now? " 

He also was unmarried. 

Oh, then, all was well. She could not have 
wives left alone at home ; but since there were no 
wives in the question, we were doing the best we 
could. 

" To see about one in the world," said the hus- 
band, " il n'y a que ga — there is nothing else 
w r orth while. A man, look you, who sticks in 
his own village like a bear," he went on, " very 
well, he sees nothing. And then death is the end 
of all. And he has seen nothing." 

Madame reminded her husband of an English- 
man who had come up this canal in a steamer. 

" Perhaps Mr. Moens in the Ytene" I sug- 
gested. 

" That's it," assented the husband. " He had 
his wife and family with him, and servants. He 
came ashore at all the locks and asked the name 



60 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

of the villages, whether from boatmen or lock- 
keepers; and then he wrote, wrote them down. 
Oh, he wrote enormously! I suppose it was a 
wager." 

A wager was a common enough explanation 
for our own exploits, but it seemed an original 
reason for taking notes. 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 

Before nine next morning the two canoes were 
installed on a light country cart at Etreux; and 
we were soon following them along the side of a 
pleasant valley full of hop-gardens and poplars. 
Agreeable villages lay here and there on the slope 
of the hill : notably, Tupigny, with the hop-poles 
hanging their garlands in the very street, and the 
houses clustered with grapes. There was a 
faint enthusiasm on our passage; weavers put 
their heads to the windows ; children cried out in 
ecstasy at sight of the two " boaties " — bar- 
quettes; and Housed pedestrians, who were ac- 
quainted with our charioteer, jested with him on 
the nature of his freight. 

We had a shower or two, but light and flying. 
The air was clean and sweet among all these 
green fields and green things growing. There 
was not a touch of autumn in the weather. And 
when, at Vadencourt, we launched from a little 
lawn opposite a mill, the sun broke forth and set 
all the leaves shining in the valley of the Oise. 

The river was swollen with the long rains. 
From Vadencourt all the way to Origny it ran 
with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh heart at 
each mile, and racing as though it already smelt 
' the sea. The water was yellow and turbulent, 
swung with an angry eddy among half -sub- 
merged willows, and made an angry clatter along 
stony shores. The course kept turning and turn- 

61 



62 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

ing in a narrow and well-timbered valley. Now 
the river would approach the side, and run glid- 
ing along the chalky base of the hill, and show us 
a few open colza fields among the trees. Now it 
would skirt the garden-walls of houses, where we 
might catch a glimpse through a doorway, and see 
a priest pacing in the checkered sunlight. Again, 
the foliage closed so thickly in front that there 
seemed to be no issue ; only a thicket of willows 
overtopped by elms and poplars, under which the 
river ran flush and fleet, and where a kingfisher 
flew past like a piece of the blue sky. On these 
different manifestations the sun poured its clear 
and catholic looks. The shadows lay as solid on 
the swift surface of the stream as on the stable 
meadows. The light sparkled golden in the dan- 
cing poplar leaves, and brought the hills into com- 
munion with our eyes. And all the while the 
river never stopped running or took breath ; and 
the reeds along the whole valley stood shivering 
from top to toe. 

There should be some myth (but if there is, I 
know it not) founded on the shivering of the 
reeds. There are not many things in nature more 
striking to man's eye. It is such an eloquent pan- 
tomime of terror; and to see such a number of 
terrified creatures taking sanctuary in every nook 
along the shore is enough to infect a silly human 
with alarm. Perhaps they are only acold, and no 
wonder, standing waist deep in the stream. Or, 
perhaps, they have never got accustomed to the 
speed and fury of the river's flux, or the miracle 
of its continuous body. Pan once played upon 
their forefathers; and so, by the hands of his 
river, he still plays upon these later generations 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 63 

down all the valley of the Oise; and plays the 
same air, both sweet and shrill, to tell us of the 
beauty and the terror of the world. 

The canoe was like a leaf in the current. It 
took it up and shook it, and carried it master- 
fully away, like a Centaur carrying off a nymph. 
To keep some command on our direction required 
hard and diligent plying of the paddle. The 
river was in such a hurry for the sea! Every 
drop of water ran in a panic, like so many people 
in a frightened crowd. But what crowd was 
ever so numerous or so single-minded? All the 
objects of sight went by at a dance measure; the 
eyesight raced with the racing river; the exigen- 
cies of every moment kept the pegs screwed so 
tight that our being quivered like a well-tuned in- 
strument, and the blood shook off its lethargy, 
and trotted through all the highways and byways 
of the veins and arteries, and in and out of the 
heart, as if circulation were but a holiday journey 
and not the daily moil of threescore years and 
ten. The reeds might nod their heads in warn- 
ing, and with tremulous gestures tell how the 
river was as cruel as it was strong and cold, and 
how death lurked in the eddy underneath the wil- 
lows. But the reeds had to stand where they 
were ; and those who stand still are always timid 
advisers. As for us, we could have shouted 
aloud. If this lively and beautiful river were, 
indeed, a thing of death's contrivance, the old 
ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself with 
us. I was living three to the minute. I was 
scoring points against him every stroke of my 
paddle, every turn of the stream. I have rarely 
had better profit of my life. 



64 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

For I think we may look upon our little private 
war with death somewhat in this light. If a man 
knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a 
journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every 
inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so 
much gained upon the thieves. And above all, 
where, instead of simply spending, he makes a 
profitable investment for some of his money, 
when it will be out of risk of loss. So every bit 
of brisk living, and above all when it is healthful, 
is just so much gained upon the wholesale filcher, 
death. We shall have the less in our pockets, the 
more in our stomachs, when he cries, Stand and 
deliver. A swift stream is a favorite artifice of 
his, and one that brings him a comfortable thing 
per annum ; but when he and I come to settle our 
accounts I shall whistle in his face for these hours 
upon the upper Oise. 

Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with 
the sunshine and the exhilaration of the pace. 
We could no longer contain ourselves and our 
content. The canoes were too small for us; we 
must be out and stretch ourselves on shore. And 
so in a green meadow we bestowed our limbs on 
the grass, and smoked deifying tobacco, and pro- 
claimed the world excellent. It was the last good 
hour of the day, and I dwell upon it with extreme 
complacency. 

On one side of the valley, high upon the chalky 
summit of the hill, a ploughman with his team ap- 
peared and disappeared at regular intervals. At 
each revelation he stood still for a few seconds 
against the sky, for all the world (as the Cigarette 
declared) like a to5' Burns who had just ploughed 
up the Mountain Daisy. He was the only living 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 65 

thing within view, unless we are to count the 
river. 

On the other side of the valley a group of red 
roofs and a belfry showed among the foliage. 
Thence some inspired bell-ringer made the after- 
noon musical on a chime of bells. There was 
something very sweet and taking in the air he 
played, and we thought we had never heard bells 
speak so intelligibly or sing so melodiously as 
these. It must have been to some such measure 
that the spinners and the young maids sang, 
" Come away, Death," in the Shakespearian 
Illyria. There is so often a threatening note, 
something blatant and metallic, in the voice of 
bells, that I believe we have fully more pain than 
pleasure from hearing them; but these, as they 
sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with a 
plaintive cadence that caught the ear like the bur- 
den of a popular song, were always moderate and 
tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of 
still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or 
the babble of a rookery in spring. I could have 
asked the bell-ringer for his blessing, good, sedate 
old man, who swung the rope so gently to the 
time of his meditations. I could have blessed 
the priest or the heritors, or whoever may be 
concerned with such affairs in France, who had 
left these sweet old bells to gladden the afternoon, 
and not held meetings, and made collections, and 
had their names repeatedly printed in the local pa- 
per, to rig up a peal of brand-new, brazen, Bir- 
mingham-hearted substitutes, who should bom- 
bard their sides to the provocation of a brand-new 
bell-ringer, and fill the echoes of the valley with 
terror and riot. 



66 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

At last the bells ceased, and with their note the 
sun withdrew. The piece was at an end ; shadow 
and silence possessed the valley of the Oise. We 
took to the paddle with glad hearts, like people 
who have sat out a noble performance and return 
to work. The river was more dangerous here ; it 
ran swifter, the eddies were more sudden and 
violent. All the way down we had had our fill 
of difficulties. Sometimes it was a weir which 
could be shot, sometimes one so shallow and full 
of stakes that we must withdraw the boats from 
the water and carry them round. But the chief 
sort of obstacle was a consequence of the late 
high winds. Every two or three hundred yards 
a tree had fallen across the river, and usually in-* 
volved more than another in its fall. Often there 
was free water at the end, and we could steer 
round the leafy promontory and hear the water 
sucking and bubbling among the twigs. Often, 
again, when the tree reached from bank to bank, 
there was room, by lying close, to shoot through 
underneath, canoe and all. Sometimes it was 
necessary to get out upon the trunk itself and 
pull the boats across; and sometimes, where the 
stream was too impetuous for this, there was 
nothing for it but to land and " carry over." 
This made a fine series of accidents in the day's 
career, and kept us aware of ourselves. 

Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was 
leading by a long way, and still full of a noble, 
exulting spirit in honor of the sun, the swift 
pace, and the church bells, the river made one 
of its leonine pounces round a corner, and I 
was aware of another fallen tree within a stone- 
cast. I had my back-board down in a trice, 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 67 

and aimed for a place where the trunk seemed 
high enough above the water, and the branches 
not too thick to let me slip below. When a man 
has just vowed eternal brotherhood with the 
universe he is not in a temper to take great 
determinations coolly, and this, which might 
have been a very important determination for 
me, had not been taken under a happy star. 
The tree caught me about the chest, and while 
I was yet struggling to make less of myself and 
get through, the river took the matter out of 
my hands and bereaved me of my boat. The 
Arethusa swung round broadside on, leaned 
over, ejected so much of me as still remained on 
board, and, thus disencumbered, whipped under 
the tree, righted, and went merrily away down 
stream. 

I do not know how long it was before I 
scrambled on to the tree to which I was left 
clinging, but it was longer than I cared about. 
My thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre 
character, but I still clung to my paddle. The 
stream ran away with my heels as fast as I 
could pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, by the 
weight, to have all the water of the Oise in 
my trousers' pockets. You can never know, 
till you try it, what a dead pull a river makes 
against a man. Death himself had me by the 
heels, for this was his last ambuscade, and he 
must now join personally in the fray. And still 
I held to my paddle. At last I dragged myself 
on to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there a 
breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humor 
and injustice. A poor figure I must have pre- 
sented to Burns upon the hill-top with his team. 



68 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

But there was the paddle in my hand. On my 
tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these 
words inscribed : " He clung to his paddle." 

The Cigarette had gone past awhile before; 
for, as I might have observed, if I had been a 
little less pleased with the universe at the mo- 
ment, there was a clear way round the tree-top 
at the farther side. He had offered his services 
to haul me out, but, as I was then already on 
my elbows, I had declined and sent him down 
stream after the truant Are thus a. The stream 
was too rapid for a man to mount with one 
canoe, let alone two, upon his hands. So I 
crawled along the trunk to shore, and proceeded 
down the meadows by the riverside. I was 
so cold that my heart was sore. I now had an 
idea of my own why the reeds so bitterly shiv- 
ered. I could have given any of them a lesson. 
The Cigarette remarked, facetiously, that he 
thought I was " taking exercise " as I drew near, 
until he made out for certain that I was only 
twittering with cold. I had a rub-down with a 
towel, and donned a dry suit from the india- 
rubber bag. But I was not my own man again 
for the rest of the voyage. I had a queasy 
sense that I wore my last dry clothes upon my 
body. The struggle had tired me ; and, perhaps, 
whether I knew it or not, I was a little dashed 
in spirit. The devouring element in the uni- 
verse had leaped out against me, in this green 
valley quickened by a running stream. The 
bells were all very pretty in their way, but I 
had heard some of the hollow notes of Pan's 
music. Would the wicked river drag me down 
by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 69 

the time? Nature's good-humor was only skin 
deep, after all. 

There was still a long way to go by the wind- 
ing course of the stream, and darkness had 
fallen, and a late bell was ringing in Origny 
Sainte-Benoite when we arrived. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
A By-day. 

The next day was Sunday, and the church bells 
had little rest ; indeed, I do not think I remember 
anywhere else so great a choice of services as 
were here offered to the devout. And while 
the bells made merry in the sunshine, all the 
world with his dog was out shooting among the 
beets and colza. 

In the morning a hawker and his wife went 
down the street at a foot-pace, singing to a very 
slow, lamentable music, " O France, mes amours/' 
It brought everybody to the door ; and when our 
landlady called in the man to buy the words, 
he had not a copy of them left. She was not the 
first nor the second who had been taken with 
the song. There is something very pathetic in 
the love of the French people, since the war, for 
dismal patriotic music-making. I have watched 
a forester from Alsace while some one was sing- 
ing " Les malheurs de la France" at a baptismal 
party in the neighborhood of Fontainebleau. 
He arose from the table and took his son aside, 
close by where I was standing. " Listen, listen/' 
he said, bearing on the boy's shoulder, " and 
remember this, my son." A little after he went 
out into the garden suddenly, and I could hear 
him sobbing in the darkness. 

The humiliation of their arms and the loss of 

70 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 71 

Alsace and Lorraine made a sore pull on the 
endurance of this sensitive people; and their 
hearts are still hot, not so much against Germany 
as against the Empire. In what other country 
will you find a patriotic ditty bring all the world 
into the street? But affliction heightens love; 
and we shall never know we are Englishmen 
until we have lost India. Independent America 
is still the cross of my existence; I cannot think 
of Farmer George without abhorrence; and I 
never feel more warmly to my own land than 
when I see the stars and stripes, and remember 
what our empire might have been. 

The hawker's little book, which I purchased, 
was a curious mixture. Side by side with the 
flippant, rowdy nonsense of the Paris music-halls 
there were many pastoral pieces, not without a 
touch of poetry, I thought, and instinct with the 
brave independence of the poorer class in France. 
There you might read how the wood-cutter 
gloried in his axe, and the gardener scorned to 
be ashamed of his spade. It was not very well 
written, this poetry of labor, but the pluck of the 
sentiment redeemed what was weak or wordy 
in the expression. The martial and the patriotic 
pieces, on the other hand, were tearful, woman- 
ish productions one and all. The poet had passed 
under the Caudine Forks; he sang for an army 
visiting the tomb of its old renown, with arms 
reversed; and sang not of victory, but of death. 
There was a number in the hawker's collection 
called Consents Francais, which may rank among 
the most dissuasive war-lyrics on record. It 
would not be possible to fight at all in such a 
spirit. The bravest conscript would turn pale 



72 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

if such a ditty were struck up beside him on the 
morning of battle ; and whole regiments would 
pile their arms to its tune. 

If Fletcher of Saltoun is in the right about 
the influence of national songs, you would say 
France was come to a poor pass. But the thing 
will work its own cure, and a sound-hearted 
and courageous people weary at length of 
snivelling over their disasters. Already Paul 
Deroulede has written some manly, military 
verses. There is not much of the trumpet note 
in them, perhaps, to stir a man's heart in his 
bosom; they lack the lyrical elation, and move 
slowly; but they are written in a grave, honor- 
able, stoical spirit, which should carry soldiers 
far in a good cause. One feels as if one would 
like to trust Deroulede with something. It 
will be happy if he can so far inoculate his fel- 
low-countrymen that they may be trusted with 
their own future. And, in the meantime, here 
is an antidote to " French Conscripts " and much 
other doleful versification. 

We had left the boats over night in the cus- 
tody of one whom we shall call Carnival. I did 
not properly catch his name, and perhaps that 
was not unfortunate for him, as I am not in a 
position to hand him down with honor to pos- 
terity. To this person's premises we strolled 
in the course of the day, and found quite a little 
deputation inspecting the canoes. There was a 
stout gentleman with a knowledge of the river, 
which he seemed eager to impart. There was 
a very elegant young gentleman in a black coat, 
with a smattering of English, who led the talk 
at once to the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 73 

And then there were three handsome girls from 
fifteen to twenty; and an old gentleman in a 
blouse, with no teeth to speak of, and a strong 
country accent. Quite the pick of Origny, I 
should suppose. 

The Cigarette had some mysteries to perform 
with his rigging in the coach-house; so I was 
left to do the parade single-handed. I found 
myself very much of a hero whether I would or 
not. The girls were full of little shudderings 
over the dangers of our journey. And I thought 
it would be ungallant not to take my cue from 
the ladies. My mishap of yesterday, told in an 
offhand way, produced a deep sensation. It was 
Othello over again, with no less than three Des- 
demonas and a sprinkling of sympathetic sen- 
ators in the background. Never were the canoes 
more flattered, or flattered more adroitly. 

" It is like a violin," cried one of the girls 
in an ecstasy. 

" I thank you for the word, mademoiselle," 
said I. " All the more since there are people 
who call out to me that it is like a coffin. " 

" Oh ! but it is really like a violin. It is fin- 
ished like a violin," she went on. 

" And polished like a violin," added a senator. 

" One has only to stretch the cords," concluded 
another, " and then tum-tumty-tum " ; he imi- 
tated the result with spirit. 

Was not this a graceful little ovation? Where 
this people finds the secret of its pretty speeches 
I cannot imagine, unless the secret should be no 
other than a sincere desire to please. But then 
no disgrace is attached in France to saying a 
thing neatly; whereas in England, to talk like 



74 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

a book is to give in one's resignation to so- 
ciety. 

The old gentleman in the blouse stole into the 
coach-house, and somewhat irrelevantly informed 
the Cigarette that he was the father of the three 
girls and four more; quite an exploit for a 
Frenchman. 

" You are very fortunate/' answered the Ciga- 
rette politely. 

And the old gentleman, having apparently 
gained his point, stole away again. 

We all got very friendly together. The girls 
proposed to start with us on the morrow, if you 
please. And, jesting apart, every one was 
anxious to know the hour of our departure. 
Now, when you are going to crawl into your 
canoe from a bad launch, a crowd, . however 
friendly, is undesirable, and so we told them 
not before twelve, and mentally determined to 
be off by ten at latest. 

Towards evening we went abroad again to 
post some letters. It was cool and pleasant; the 
long village was quite empty, except for one or 
two urchins who followed us as they might have 
followed a menagerie; the hills and the tree- 
tops looked in from all sides through the clear 
air, and the bells were chiming for yet another 
service. 

Suddenly we sighted the three girls, standing, 
with a fourth sister, in front of a shop on the 
wide selvage of the roadway. We had been 
very merry with them a little while ago, to be 
sure. But what was the etiquette of Origny? 
Had it been a country road, of course we should 
have spoken to them; but here, under the eyes 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 75 

of all the gossips, ought we to do even as much 
as bow? I consulted the Cigarette. 

" Look/' said he. 

I looked. There were the four girls on the 
same spot; but now four backs were turned to 
us, very upright and conscious. Corporal Mod- 
esty had given the word of command, and the 
well-disciplined picket had gone right-about-face 
like a single person. They maintained this 
formation all the while we were in sight; but 
we heard them tittering among themselves, and 
the girl whom we had not met laughed with open 
mouth, and even looked over her shoulder at the 
enemy. I wonder was it altogether modesty 
after all, or in part a sort of country provoca- 
tion? 

As we were returning to the inn we beheld 
something floating in the ample field of golden 
evening sky, above the chalk cliffs and the trees 
that grow along their summit. It was too high 
up, too large, and too steady for a kite; and, as 
it was dark, it could not be a star. For, al- 
though a star were as black as ink and as rugged 
as a walnut, so amply does the sun bathe heaven 
with radiance that it would sparkle like a point 
of light for us. The village was dotted with 
people with their heads in air; and the children 
were in a bustle all along the street and far up 
the straight road that climbs the hill, where we 
could still see them running in loose knots. It 
was a balloon, we learned, which had left St. 
Quentin at half-past five that evening. Mighty 
composedly the majority of the grown people 
took it. But we were English, and were soon 
running up the hill with the best. Being travel- 



76 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

lers ourselves in a small way, we would fain 
have seen these other travellers alight. 

The spectacle was over by the time we gained 
the top of the hill. All the gold had withered 
out of the sky, and the balloon had disappeared. 
Whither? I ask myself; caught up into the 
seventh heaven? or come safely to land some- 
where in that blue, uneven distance, into which 
the roadway dipped and melted before our eyes? 
Probably the aeronauts were already warming 
themselves at a farm chimney, for they say it 
is cold in these unhomely regions of the air. 
The night fell swiftly. Roadside trees and 
disappointed sightseers, returning through the 
meadows, stood out in black against a margin 
of low, red sunset. It was cheerfuller to face 
the other way, and so down the hill we went, 
with a full moon, the color of a melon, swing- 
ing high above the wooded valley, and the white 
cliffs behind us faintly reddened by the fire of 
the chalk-kilns. 

The lamps were lighted, and the salads were 
being made in Origny Sainte-Benoite by the 
river. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
The Company at Table. 

Although we came late for dinner, the com- 
pany at table treated us to sparkling wine. 
' That is how we are in France/' said one. 
" Those who sit down with us are our friends." 
And the rest applauded. 

They were three altogether, and an odd trio 
to pass the Sunday with. 

Two of them were guests like ourselves, both 
men of the north. One ruddy, and of a full habit 
of body, with copious black hair and beard, the 
intrepid hunter of France, who thought nothing 
so small, not even a lark or a minnow, but he 
might vindicate his prowess by its capture. For 
such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing 
like Samson's, his arteries running buckets of 
red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, 
produced a feeling of disproportion in the world, 
as when a steam-hammer is set to cracking nuts. 
The other was a quiet, subdued person, blond, 
and lymphatic, and sad, with something the look 
of a Dane: " Tristes tetes de Danois!" as Gas- 
ton Lafenestre used to say. 

I must not let that name go by without a word 
for the best of all good fellows, now gone down 
into the dust. We shall never again see Gaston 
in his forest costume, — he was Gaston with all 

the world, in affection, not in disrespect, — 

77 



78 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

nor hear him wake the echoes of Fontainebleau 
with the woodland horn. Never again shall his 
kind smile put peace among all races of artistic 
men, and make the Englishman at home in 
France. Never more shall the sheep, who were 
not more innocent at heart than he, sit all un- 
consciously for his industrious pencil. He died 
too early, at the very moment when he was be- 
ginning to put forth fresh sprouts and blossom 
into something worthy of himself ; and yet none 
who knew him will think he lived in vain. I 
never knew a man so little, for whom yet I had 
so much affection; and I find it a good test of 
others, how much they had learned to under- 
stand and value him. His was, indeed, a good 
influence in life while he was still among us; 
he had a fresh laugh ; it did you good to see him ; 
and, however sad he may have been at heart, 
he always bore a bold and cheerful countenance 
and took fortune's worst as it were the showers 
of spring. But now his mother sits alone by 
the side of Fontainebleau woods, where he 
gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious 
youth. 

Many of his pictures found their way across 
the Channel; besides those which were stolen, 
when a dastardly Yankee left him alone in Lon- 
don with two English pence, and, perhaps, twice 
as many words of English. If any one who 
reads these lines should have a scene of sheep, in 
the manner of Jacques, with this fine creature's 
signature, let him tell himself that one of the 
kindest and bravest of men has lent a hand to 
decorate his lodging. There may be better pic- 
tures in the National Gallery; but not a painter 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 79 

among the generations had a better heart. 
Precious in the sight of the Lord of humanity, 
the Psalms tell us, is the death of His saints. 
It had need to be precious; for it is very costly, 
when, by a stroke, a mother is left desolate, and 
the peace-maker and the peace-looker of a whole 
society is laid in the ground with Caesar and the 
Twelve Apostles. 

There is something lacking among the oaks of 
Fontainebleau ; and when the dessert comes in 
at Barbizon, people look to the door for a figure 
that is gone. 

The third of our companions at Origny was 
no less a person than the landlady's husband; 
not properly the landlord, since he worked him- 
self in a factory during the day, and came to 
his own house at evening as a guest; a man 
worn to skin and bone by perpetual excitement, 
with baldish head, sharp features, and swift, 
shining eyes. On Saturday, describing some 
paltry adventure at a duck hunt, he broke a plate 
into a score of fragments. Whenever he made 
a remark he would look all around the table 
with his chin raised and a spark of green light 
in either eye, seeking approval. His wife ap- 
peared now and again in the doorway of the 
room, where she was superintending dinner, with 
a " Henri, you forget yourself," or a " Henri, 
you can surely talk without making such a noise." 
Indeed, that was what the honest fellow could 
not do. On the most trifling matter his voice 
kindled, his fist visited the table, and his voice 
rolled abroad in changeful thunder. I never saw 
such a petard of a man; I think the devil was 
in him. He had two favorite expressions, " It 



80 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

is logical/' or illogical, as the case might be; 
and this other thrown out with a certain bra- 
vado, as a man might unfurl a banner, at the 
beginning of many a long and sonorous story: 
" I am a proletarian, you see." Indeed, we saw 
it very well. God forbid that ever I should 
find him handling a gun in Paris streets. That 
will not be a good moment for the general 
public. 

I thought his two phrases very much repre- 
sented the good and evil of his class, and, to 
some extent, of his country. It is a strong thing 
to say what one is, and not be ashamed of it; 
even although it be in doubtful taste to repeat 
the statement too often in one evening. I should 
not admire it in a duke, of course; but as times 
go the trait is honorable in a workman. On the 
other hand, it is not at all a strong thing to put 
one's reliance upon logic; and our own logic 
particularly, for it is generally wrong. We never 
know where we are to end if once we begin fol- 
lowing words or doctors. There is an upright 
stock in a man's own heart that is trustier than 
any syllogism ; and the eyes, and the sympathies, 
and appetites know a thing or two that have never 
yet been stated in controversy. Reasons are as 
plentiful as blackberries; and, like fisticuffs, they 
serve impartially with all sides. Doctrines do 
not stand or fall by their proofs and are only 
logical in so far as they are cleverly put. An 
able controversialist no more than an able general 
demonstrates the justice of his cause. But 
France is all gone wandering after one or two 
big words ; it will take some time before they can 
be satisfied that they are no more than words, 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 81 

however big; and, when once that is done, they 
will perhaps find logic less diverting. 

The conversation opened with details of the 
day's shooting. When all the sportsmen of a 
village shoot over the village territory pro indi- 
viso, it is plain that many questions of etiquette 
and priority must arise. 

" Here now," cried the landlord, brandishing 
a plate, " here is a field of beet-root. Well, 
here am I, then. I advance, do I not? Eh, bien! 
sacristi; " and the statement, waxing louder, rolls 
off into a reverberation of oaths, the speaker 
glaring about for sympathy, and everybody nod- 
ding his head to him in the name of peace. 

The ruddy Northman told some tales of his 
own prowess in keeping order : notably one of a 
Marquis. 

" Marquis," I said, " if you take another step 
I fire upon you. You have committed a dirti- 
ness, Marquis." 

Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis touched 
his cap and withdrew. 

The landlord applauded noisily. " It was well 
done," he said. " He did all that he could. He 
admitted he was wrong." And then oath upon 
oath. He was no marquis-lover, either, but he 
had a sense of justice in him, this proletarian 
host of ours. 

From the matter of hunting, the talk veered 
into a general comparison of Paris and the coun- 
try. . The proletarian beat the table like a drum 
in praise of Paris. " What is Paris? Paris is 
the cream of France. There are no Parisians; 
it is you, and I, and everybody who are Parisians. 
A man has eighty chances per cent to get on in 



82 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

the world in Paris." And he drew a vivid sketch 
of the workman in a den no bigger than a dog- 
hutch, making articles that were to go all over 
the world. " Eh bien, quoi, c'est magnifique, 
qal" cried he. 

The sad Northman interfered in praise of a 
peasant's life; he thought Paris bad for men and 
women. " Centralization/' said he — 

But the landlord was at his throat in a moment. 
It was all logical, he showed him, and all magnifi- 
cent. " What a spectacle ! What a glance for 
an eye ! " And the dishes reeled upon the table 
under a cannonade of blows. 

Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word in 
praise of the liberty of opinion in France. I 
could hardly have shot more amiss. There was 
an instant silence and a great wagging of sig- 
nificant heads. They did not fancy the subject, 
it was plain, but they gave me to understand that 
the sad Northman was a martyr on account of 
his views. " Ask him a bit," said they. "Just 
ask him." 

" Yes, sir," said he in his quiet way, answer- 
ing me, although I had not spoken, " I am 
afraid there is less liberty of opinion in France 
than you may imagine." And with that he 
dropped his eyes and seemed to consider the 
subject at an end. 

Our curiosity was mightily excited at this. 
How, or why, or when was this lymphatic bag- 
man martyred ? We concluded at once it was on 
some religious question, and brushed up our 
memories of the Inquisition, which were princi- 
pally drawn from Poe's horrid story, and the 
sermon in Tristram Shandy, I believe. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 83 

On the morrow we had an opportunity of go- 
ing further into the question; for when we rose 
very early to avoid a sympathizing deputation at 
our departure, we found the hero up before us. 
He was breaking his fast on white wine and raw 
onions, in order to keep up the character of 
martyr, I conclude. We had a long conversa- 
tion, and made out what we wanted in spite of 
his reserve. But here was a truly curious cir- 
cumstance. It seems possible for two Scotch- 
men and a Frenchman to discuss during a long 
half-hour, and each nationality have a different 
idea in view throughout. It was not till the 
very end that we discovered his heresy had been 
political, or that he suspected our mistake. The 
terms and spirit in which he spoke of his political 
beliefs were, in our eyes, suited to religious be- 
liefs. And vice versa. 

Nothing could be more characteristic of the 
two countries. Politics are the religion of 
France ; as Nanty Ewart would have said, " A 

d d bad religion/' while we, at home, keep 

most of our bitterness for all differences about a 
hymn-book or a Hebrew word which, perhaps, 
neither of the parties can translate. And per- 
haps the misconception is typical of many others 
that may never be cleared up; not only between 
people of different race, but between those of 
different sex. 

As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a Com- 
munist, or perhaps only a Communard, which is 
a very different thing, and had lost one or more 
situations in consequence. I think he had also 
been rejected in marriage; but perhaps he had a 
sentimental way of considering business which 



84 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

deceived me. He was a mild, gentle crea- 
ture, anyway, and I hope he has got a better sit- 
uation and married a more suitable wife since 
then. 



DOWN THE OISE 
To Moy. 

Carnival notoriously cheated us at first. 
Finding us easy in our ways, he regretted hav- 
ing let us off so cheaply, and, taking me aside, 
told me a cock-and-bull story, with the moral 
of another five francs for the narrator. The 
think was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and 
at once dropped all friendliness of manner and 
kept him in his place as an inferior, with freez- 
ing British dignity. He saw in a moment that 
he had gone too far and killed a willing horse; 
his face fell; I am sure he would have refunded if 
he could only have thought of a decent pretext. 
He wished me to drink with him, but I would 
none of his drinks. He grew pathetically tender 
in his professions, but I walked beside him in 
silence or answered him in stately courtesies, 
and, when we got to the landing-place, passed 
the word in English slang to the Cigarette, 

In spite of the false scent we had thrown out 
the day before, there must have been fifty people 
about the bridge. We were as pleasant as we 
could be with all but Carnival. We said good- 
bye, shaking hands with the old gentleman who 
knew the river and the young gentleman who 
had a smattering of English, but never a word 
for Carnival. Poor Carnival, here was a humili- 
ation. He who had been so much identified with 

85 



86 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

the canoes, who had given orders in our name, 
who had shown off the boats and even the boat- 
men like a private exhibition of his own, to be 
now so publicly shamed by the lions of his cara- 
van! I never saw anybody look more crest- 
fallen than he. He hung in the background, 
coming timidly forward ever and again as he 
thought he saw some symptom of a relenting 
humor, and falling hurriedly back when he en- 
countered a cold stare. Let us hope it will be 
a lesson to him. 

I would not have mentioned Carnival's pecca- 
dillo had not the thing been so uncommon in 
France. This, for instance, was the only case of 
dishonesty or even sharp practice in our whole 
voyage. We talk very much about our honesty 
in England. It is a good rule to be on your 
guard wherever you hear great professions about 
a very little piece of virtue. If the English 
could only hear how they are spoken of abroad, 
they might confine themselves for awhile to 
remedying the fact, and perhaps even when that 
was done, give us fewer of their airs. 

The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were 
not present at our start ; but when we got round 
to the second bridge, behold, it was black with 
sight-seers! We were loudly cheered, and for 
a good way below young lads and lasses ran along 
the bank, still cheering. What with current and 
paddling, we were flashing along like swallows. 
It was no joke to keep up with us upon the 
woody shore. But the girls picked up their 
skirts, as if they were sure they had good ankles, 
and followed until their breath was out. The 
last to weary were the three graces and a couple of 



DOWN THE OISE 87 

companions; and just as they, too, had had 
enough, the foremost of the three leaped upon a 
tree-stump and kissed her hand to the canoeists. 
Not Diana herself, although this was more of a 
Venus, after all, could have done a graceful 
thing more gracefully. "Come back again!" 
she cried ; and all the others echoed her ; and the 
hills about Origny repeated the words, " Come 
back." But the river had us round an angle in 
a twinkling, and we were alone with the green 
trees and running water. 

Come back ? There is no coming back, young 
ladies, on the impetuous stream of life. 

The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, 
The ploughman from the sun his season takes. 

And we must all set our pocket watches by 
the clock of fate. There is a headlong, forth- 
right tide, that bears away man with his fancies 
like straw, and runs fast in time and space. It 
is full of curves like this, your winding river of 
the Oise; and lingers and returns in pleasant 
pastorals; and yet, rightly thought upon, never 
returns at all. For though it should revisit the 
same acre of meadow in the same hour, it will 
have made an ample sweep between whiles ; many 
little streams will have fallen in; many exhala- 
tions risen towards the sun; and even although 
it were the same acre, it will not be the same river 
Oise. And thus, O graces of Origny, although 
the wandering fortune of my life should carry 
me back again to where you await death's whistle 
by the river, that will not be the old I who 
walks the street; and those wives and mothers, 
say, will those be you? 



88 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

There was never any mistake about the Oise, 
as a matter of fact. In these upper reaches it 
was still in a prodigious hurry for the sea. It 
ran so fast and merrily, through all the wind- 
ings of its channel, that I strained my thumb 
fighting with the rapids, and had to paddle all 
the rest of the way with one hand turned up. 
Sometimes it had to serve mills; and being still 
a little river, ran very dry and shallow in 
the meanwhile. We had to put our legs out of 
the boat, and shove ourselves off the sand of the 
bottom with our feet. And still it went on its 
way singing among the poplars, and making a 
green valley in the world. After a good woman, 
and a good book, and tobacco, there is nothing 
so agreeable on earth as a river. I forgave it 
its attempt on my life; which was, after all, one 
part owing to the unruly winds of heaven that 
had blown down the tree, one part to my own 
mismanagement, and only a third part to the 
river itself, and that not out of malice, but from 
its great preoccupation over its own business of 
getting to the sea. A difficult business, too ; for 
the detours it had to make are not to be counted. 
The geographers seem to have given up the at- 
tempt; for I found no map represent the infinite 
contortion of its course. A fact will say more 
than any of them. After we had been some 
hours, three, if I mistake not, flitting by the 
trees at this smooth, breakneck gallop, when 
we came upon a hamlet and asked where we were, 
we had got no further than four kilometres (say 
two miles and a half) from Origny. If it were 
not for the honor of the thing (in the Scotch 



DOWN THE OISE 89 

saying), we might almost as well have been 
standing still. 

We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelo- 
gram of poplars. The leaves danced and prat- 
tled in the wind all round about us. The river 
hurried on meanwhile, and seemed to chide at 
our delay. Little we cared. The river knew 
where it was going; not so we; the less our 
hurry, where we found good quarters, and a 
pleasant theatre for a pipe. At that hour stock- 
brokers were shouting in Paris Bourse for two 
or three per cent ; but we minded them as little as 
the sliding stream, and sacrificed a hecatomb of 
minutes to the gods of tobacco and digestion. 
Hurry is the resource of the faithless. Where 
a man can trust his own heart, and those of his 
friends, to-morrow is as good as to-day. And 
if he die in the meanwhile, why, then, there he 
dies, and the question is solved. 

We had to take to the canal in the course of 
the afternoon; because where it crossed the 
river there was, not a bridge, but a siphon. If 
it had not been for an excited fellow on the 
bank we should have paddled right into the 
siphon, and thenceforward not paddled any more. 
We met a man, a gentleman, on the tow-path, 
who was much interested in our cruise. And I 
was witness to a strange seizure of lying suf- 
fered by the Cigarette; who, because his knife 
came from Norway, narrated all sorts of ad- 
ventures in that country, where he has never been. 
He was quite feverish at the end, and pleaded 
demoniacal possession. 

Moy (pronounce Moy) was a pleasant little vil- 



90 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

lage, gathered round a chateau in a moat. The 
air was perfumed with hemp from neighboring 
fields. At the Golden Sheep we found excellent 
entertainment. German shells from the siege of 
La Fere, Niirnberg figures, gold-fish in a bowl, 
and all manner of knickknacks, embellished the 
public room. The landlady was a stout, plain, 
short-sighted, motherly body, with something 
not far short of a genius for cookery. She had 
a guess of her excellence herself. After every 
dish was sent in, she would come and look on 
at the dinner for awhile, with puckered, blinking 
eyes. u Cest bon, n'est-ce pas? " she would 
say; and when she had received a proper answer, 
she disappeared into the kitchen. That com- 
mon French dish, partridge and cabbages, be- 
came a new thing in my eyes at the Golden 
Sheep; and many subsequent dinners have bit- 
terly disappointed me in consequence. Sweet 
was our rest in the Golden Sheep at Moy. 



LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 

We lingered in Moy a good part of the day, for 
we were fond of being philosophical, and scorned 
long journeys and early starts on principle. The 
place, moreover, invited to repose. People in 
elaborate shooting-costumes sallied from the 
chateau with guns and game-bags; and this was 
a pleasure in itself, to remain behind while these 
elegant pleasure-seekers took the first of the 
morning. In this way all the world may be an 
aristocrat, and play the duke among marquises, 
and the reigning monarch among dukes, if he 
will only outvie them in tranquillity. An im- 
perturbable demeanor comes from perfect pa- 
tience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or 
frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune 
at their own private pace, like a clock during a 
thunder-storm. 

We made a very short day of it to La Fere; 
but the dusk was falling and a small rain had be- 
gun before w r e stowed the boats. La Fere is a 
fortified town in a plain, and has two belts of 
rampart. Between the first and the second ex- 
tends a region of waste land and cultivated 
patches. Here and there along the wayside were 
posters forbidding trespass in the name of mili- 
tary engineering. At last a second gateway ad- 
mitted us to the town itself. Lighted windows 
looked gladsome, whiffs of comfortable cookery 
came abroad upon the air. The town was full 

91 



92 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

of the military reserve, out for the French 
Autumn manoeuvers, and the reservists walked 
speedily and wore their formidable great-coats. 
It was a fine night to be within doors over dinner, 
and hear the rain upon the windows. 

The Cigarette and I could not sufficiently con- 
gratulate each other on the prospect, for we had 
been told there was a capital inn at La Fere. 
Such a dinner as we were going to eat! such 
beds as we were to sleep in ! and all the while the 
rain raining on houseless folk over all the pop- 
lared country-side. It made our mouths water. 
The inn bore the name of some woodland ani- 
mal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget which. But 
I shall never forget how spacious and how emi- 
nently habitable it looked as we drew near. 
The carriage entry was lighted up, not by in- 
tention, but from the mere superfluity of fire 
and candle in the house. A rattle of many 
dishes came to our ears ; we sighted a great field 
of tablecloth; the kitchen glowed like a forge 
and smelt like a garden of things to eat. 

Into this, the inmost shrine and physiological 
heart of a hostelry, with all its furnaces in action 
and all its dressers charged with viands, you are 
now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, 
a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a 
limp india-rubber bag upon his arm. I do not 
believe I have a sound view of that kitchen; I 
saw it through a sort of glory, but it seemed to 
me crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, 
who all turned round from their saucepans and 
looked at us with surprise. There was no doubt 
about the landlady, however; there she was, 
heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full 



LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 93 

of affairs. Her I asked politely — too politely, 
thinks the Cigarette — if we could have beds, 
she surveying us coldly from head to foot. 

" You will find beds in the suburb/' she re- 
marked. u We are too busy for .the like of 
you." 

If we could make an entrance, change our 
clothes, and order a bottle of wine, I felt sure we 
could put things right; so said I, " If we cannot 
sleep, we may at least dine," — and was for de- 
positing my bag. 

What a terrible convulsion of nature was that 
which followed in the landlady's face! She 
made a run at us and stamped her foot. 

" Out with you, — out of the door ! " she 
screeched. " Sortez! sortez! sortez par la 
portel" 

I do not know how it happened, but next mo- 
ment we were out in the rain and darkness, and 
I was cursing before the carriage entry like a 
disappointed mendicant. Where were the 
boating-men of Belgium? where the judge and his 
good wines? and where the graces of Origny? 
Black, black was the night after the firelit kitchen, 
but what was that to the blackness in our heart? 
This was not the first time that I have been re- 
fused a lodging. Often and often have I 
planned what I should do if such a misadventure 
happened to me again. And nothing is easier to 
plan. But to put in execution, with the heart 
boiling at the indignity? Try it ; try it only once, 
and tell me what you did. 

It is all very fine to talk about tramps and moral- 
ity. Six hours of police surveillance (such as 
I have had) or one brutal rejection from an inn 



94 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

door change your views upon the subject like a 
course of lectures. As long as you keep in the 
upper regions, with all the world bowing to you 
as you go, social arrangements have a very 
handsome air ; but once get under the wheels and 
you wish society were at the devil. I will give 
most respectable men a fortnight of such a life, 
and then I will offer them twopence for what 
remains of their morality. 

For my part, when I was turned out of the 
Stag, or the Hind, or whatever it was, I would 
have set the temple of Diana on fire if it had 
been handy. There was no crime complete 
enough to express my disapproval of human in- 
stitutions. As for the Cigarette, I never knew 
a man so altered. " We have been taken for 
pedlars again," said he. " Good God, what it 
must be to be a pedlar in reality ! " He par- 
ticularized a complaint for every joint in the 
landlady's body. Timon was a philanthropist 
alongside of him. And then, when he was at the 
top of his maledictory bent, he would suddenly 
break away and begin whimperingly to com- 
miserate the poor. " I hope to God," he said, 
— and I trust the prayer was answered, — " that 
I shall never be uncivil to a pedlar." Was this 
the imperturbable Cigarette? This, this was he. 
Oh, change beyond report, thought, or belief! 

Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads; 
and the windows grew brighter as the night in- 
creased in darkness. We trudged in and out of 
La Fere streets; we saw shops, and private 
houses where people were copiously dining; we 
saw stables where carters' nags had plenty of 
fodder and clean straw; we saw no end of re- 



LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 95 

servists, who were very sorry for themselves this 
wet night, I doubt not, and yearned for their 
country homes; but had they not each man his 
place in La Fere barracks? And we, what had 
we? 

There seemed to be no other inn in the whole 
town. People gave us directions, which we fol- 
lowed as best we could, generally with the effect 
of bringing us out again upon the scene of our 
disgrace. We were very sad people indeed, by 
the time we had gone all over La Fere; and the 
Cigarette had already made up his mind to lie 
under a poplar and sup off a loaf of bread. But 
right at the other end, the house next the town- 
gate was full of light and bustle. " Basin, 
aubergiste, loge a pied/' was the sign. " A la 
Croix de Malte." There were we received. 

The room was full of noisy reservists drink- 
ing and smoking; and we were very glad indeed 
when the drums and bugles began to go about 
the streets, and one and all had to snatch shakoes 
and be off for the barracks. 

Bazin was a tall man, running to fat; soft- 
spoken, with a delicate, gentle face. We asked 
him to share our wine; but he excused himself, 
having pledged reservists all day long. This was 
a very different type of the workman-innkeeper 
from the bawling, disputatious fellow at Origny. 
He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a 
decorative painter in his youth. There were 
such opportunities for self-instruction there, he 
said. And if any one has read Zola's description 
of the workman's marriage party visiting the 
Louvre they would do well to have heard Bazin 
by way of antidote. He had delighted in the 



96 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

museums in his youth. " One sees there little 
miracles of work," he said; " that is what makes 
a good workman; it kindles a spark." We asked 
him how he managed in La Fere. " I am mar- 
ried," he said, " and I have my pretty children. 
But frankly, it is no life at all. From morning 
to night I pledge a pack of good-enough fellows 
who know nothing." 

It faired as the night went on, and the moon 
came out of the clouds. We sat in front of the 
door, talking softly with Bazin. At the guard- 
house opposite the guard was being for ever 
turned out, as trains of field artillery kept clank- 
ing in out of the night or patrols of horsemen 
trotted by in their cloaks. Madame Bazin came 
out after awhile; she was tired with her day's 
work, I suppose; and she nestled up to her hus- 
band and laid her head upon his breast. He had 
his arm about her and kept gently patting her on 
the shoulder. I think Bazin was right, and he 
was really married. Of how few people can 
the same be said ! 

Little did the Bazins know how much they 
served us. We were charged for candles, for 
food and drink, and for the beds we slept in. 
But there was nothing in the bill for the hus- 
band's pleasant talk; nor for the pretty spectacle 
of their married life. And there was yet an- 
other item uncharged. For these people's po- 
liteness really set us up again in our own esteem. 
We had a thirst for consideration; the sense of 
insult was still hot in our spirits ; and civil usage 
seemed to restore us to our position in the world. 

How little we pay our way in life! Although 
we have our purses continually in our hand, the 



LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 97 

better part of service goes still unrewarded, 
But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as 
good as it gets. Perhaps the Bazins knew how 
much I liked them? perhaps they, also, were 
healed of some slights by the thanks that I gave 
them in my manner? 



DOWN THE OISE 
Through the Golden Valley. 

Below La Fere the river runs through a 
piece of open pastoral country; green, opulent, 
loved by breeders ; called the Golden Valley. In 
wide sweeps, and with a swift and equable gal- 
lop, the ceaseless stream of water visits and makes 
green the fields. Kine, and horses, and little 
humorous donkeys browse together in the mead- 
ows, and come down in troops to the riverside 
to drink. They make a strange feature in the 
landscape; above all when startled, and you see 
them galloping to and fro, with their incongru- 
ous forms and faces. It gives a feeling as of 
great, unfenced pampas, and the herds of wan- 
dering nations. There were hills in the distance 
upon either hand; and on one side, the river 
sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs of 
Coucy and St. Gobain. 

The artillery were practising at La Fere; and 
soon the cannon of heaven joined in that loud 
play. Two continents of cloud met and ex- 
changed salvos overhead; while all round the 
horizon we could see sunshine and clear air upon 
the hills. What with the guns and the thunder, 
the herds were all frightened in the Golden Val- 
ley. We could see them tossing their heads, and 
running to and fro in timorous indecision; and 
when they had made up their minds, and the 

98 



DOWN THE OISE 99 

donkey followed the horse, and the cow was 
after the donkey, we could hear their hoofs thun- 
dering abroad over the meadows. It had a 
martial sound, like cavalry charges. And alto- 
gether, as far as the ears are concerned, we had 
a very rousing battle piece performed for our 
amusement. 

At last, the guns and the thunder dropped off ; 
the sun shone on the wet meadows; the air was 
scented with the breath of rejoicing trees and 
grass ; and the river kept unweariedly carrying us 
on at its best pace. There was a manufacturing 
district about Chauny; and after that the banks 
grew so high that they hid the adjacent country, 
and we could see nothing but clay sides, and one 
willow after another. Only here and there we 
passed by a village or a ferry, and some wonder- 
ing child upon the bank w r ould stare after us 
until we turned the corner. I dare say we. con- 
tinued to paddle in that child's dreams for many 
a night after. 

Sun and shower alternated like day and night, 
making the hours longer by their variety. When 
the showers were heavy I could feel each drop 
striking through my jersey to my warm skin; 
and the accumulation of small shocks put me 
nearly beside myself. I decided I should buy 
a mackintosh at Noyon. It is nothing to get 
wet; but the misery of these individual pricks 
of cold all over my body at the same instant of 
time made me flail the water with my paddle 
like a madman. The Cigarette was greatly 
amused by these ebullitions. It gave him some- 
thing else to look at besides clay banks and wil- 
lows. 



100 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

All the time the river stole away like a thief in 
straight places, or swung round corners with an 
eddy; the willows nodded and were undermined 
all day long ; the clay banks tumbled in ; the Oise, 
which had been so many centuries making the 
Golden Valley, seemed to have changed its fancy 
and be bent upon undoing its performance. 
What a number of things a river does by simply 
following Gravity in the innocence of its heart! 



NOYON CATHEDRAL 

Noyon stands about a mile from the river, in 
a little plain surrounded by wooded hills, and en- 
tirely covers an eminence with its tile roofs, sur- 
mounted by a long, straight-backed cathedral 
with two stiff towers. As we got into the town, 
the tile roofs seemed to tumble up-hill one upon 
another, in the oddest disorder; but for all their 
scrambling they did not attain above the knees 
of the cathedral, which stood, upright and solemn, 
over all. As the streets drew near to this pre- 
siding genius, through the market-place under 
the Hotel de Ville, 'they grew emptier and more 
composed. Blank walls and shuttered windows 
were turned to the great edifice, and grass grew 
on the white causeway. " Put off thy shoes 
from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou 
standest is holy ground." The Hotel du Nord, 
nevertheless, lights its secular tapers within a 
stone-cast of the church; and we had the superb 
east end before our eyes all morning from the 
window of our bedroom. I have seldom looked 
on the east end of a church with more complete 
sympathy. As it flanges out in three wide ter- 
races, and settles down broadly on the earth, it 
looks like the poop of some great old battle-ship. 
Hollow-backed buttresses carry vases, which fig- 
ure for the stern lanterns. There is a roll in 
the ground, and the towers just appear above 

the pitch of the roof, as though the good ship 

101 



102 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

were bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At 
any moment it might be a hundred feet away 
from you, climbing the next billow. At any 
moment a window might open, and some old 
admiral thrust forth a cocked hat and proceed 
to take an observation. The old admirals sail 
the sea no longer; the old ships of battle are 
all broken up, and live only in pictures ; but this, 
that was a church before ever they were thought 
upon, is still a church, and makes as brave an 
appearance by the Oise. The cathedral and the 
river are probably the two oldest things for miles 
around; and certainly they have both a grand 
old age. 

The Sacristan took us to the top of one of 
the towers, and showed us the five bells hanging 
in their loft. Frqm above the town was a tes- 
sellated pavement of roofs and gardens; the old 
line of rampart was plainly traceable; and the 
Sacristan pointed out to us, far across the plain, 
in a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, the 
towers of Chateau Coucy. 

I find I never weary of great churches. It 
is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Man- 
kind was never so happily inspired as when it 
made a cathedral : a thing as single and specious 
as a statue to the first glance, and yet, on ex- 
amination, as lively and interesting as a forest in 
detail. The height of spires cannot be taken 
by trigonometry; they measure absurdly short, 
and how tall they are to the admiring eye ! And 
where we have so many elegant proportions, 
growing one out of the other, and all together 
into one, it seems as if proportion transcended 
itself and became something different and more 



NOYON CATHEDRAL 103 

imposing. I could never fathom how a man 
dares to lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral. 
What is he to say that will not be an anti-cli- 
max ? For though I have heard a considerable 
variety of sermons, I never yet heard one that 
was so expressive as a cathedral. Tis the best 
preacher itself, and preaches day and night ; not 
only telling you of man's art and aspirations 
in the past, but convicting your own soul of 
ardent sympathies ; or rather, like all good preach- 
ers, it sets you preaching to yourself, — and every 
man is his own doctor of divinity in the last re- 
sort. 

As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of 
the afternoon, the sweet, groaning thunder of 
the organ floated out of the church like a sum- 
mons. I was not averse, liking the theatre so 
well, to sit out an act or two of the play, but I 
could never rightly make out the nature of the 
service I beheld. Four or five priests and as 
many choristers were singing Miserere before 
the high altar when I went in. There was no 
congregation but a few old women on chairs and 
old men kneeling on the pavement. After a 
while a long train of young girls, walking two 
and two, each with a lighted taper in her hand, 
and all dressed in black with a white veil, came 
from behind the altar and began to descend the 
nave; the four first carrying a Virgin and Child 
upon a table. The priests and choristers arose 
from their knees and followed after, singing 
" Ave Mary " as they went. In this order they 
made the circuit of the cathedral, passing twice 
before me where I leaned against a pillar. The 
priest who seemed of most consequence was a 



104 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

strange, down-looking old man. He kept mum- 
bling players with hs lips; but, as he looked 
upon me darkling, it did not seem as if prayer 
were uppermost in his heart. Two others, who 
bore the burden of the chant, were stout, brutal, 
military-looking men of forty, with bold, over- 
fed eyes; they sang with some lustiness, and 
trolled forth " Ave Mary " like a garrison 
catch. The little girls were timid and grave. 
As they footed slowly up the aisle, each one took 
a moment's glance at the Englishman; and the 
big nun who played marshal fairly stared him 
out of countenance. As for the choristers, from 
first to last they misbehaved as only boys can 
misbehave, and cruelly marred the performance 
with their antics. 

I understood a great deal of the spirit of what 
went on. Indeed, it would be difficult not to un- 
derstand the Miserere, which I take to be the 
composition of an atheist. If it ever be a good 
thing to take such despondency to heart, the 
Miserere is the right music and a cathedral a 
fit scene. So far I am at one with the Catholics, 
— an odd name for them, after all ! But why, in 
God's name, these holiday choristers? why these 
priests who steal wandering looks about the con- 
gregation while they feign to be at prayer? why 
this fat nun, who rudely arranges her procession 
and shakes the delinquent virgins by the elbow? 
why this spitting, and snuffing, and forgetting 
of keys, and the thousand and one little misad- 
ventures that disturb a frame of mind, labori- 
ously edified with chants and organings? In 
any play-house reverend fathers may see what 
can be done with a little art, and how, to move 



NOYON CATHEDRAL 105 

high sentiments, it is necessary to drill the super- 
numeraries and have every stool in its proper 
place. 

One other circumstance distressed me. I could 
bear a Miserere myself, having had a good deal 
of open-air exercise of late; but I wished the old 
people somewhere else. It was neither the right 
sort of music nor the right sort of divinity for 
men and women who have come through most 
accidents by this time, and probably have an 
opinion of their own upon the tragic element in 
life. A person up in years can generally do his 
own Miserere for himself ; although I notice that 
such an one often prefers Jubilate Deo for his 
ordinary singing. On the whole, the most re- 
ligious exercise for the aged is probably to recall 
their own experience; so many friends dead, so 
many hopes disappointed, so many slips and 
stumbles, and withal so many bright days and 
smiling providences; there is surely the matter 
of a very eloquent sermon in all this. 

On the whole I was greatly solemnized. In 
the little pictorial map of our whole Inland 
Voyage, which my fancy still preserves, and 
sometimes unrolls for the amusement of odd mo- 
ments, Noyon cathedral figures on a most pre- 
posterous scale, and must be nearly as large as 
the department. I can still see the faces of the 
priests as if they were at my elbow, and hear 
Ave Maria, or a pro nobis sounding through the 
church. All Noyon is blotted out for me by 
these superior memories; and I do not care to 
say more about the place. It was but a stack 
of brown roofs at the best, where I believe people 
live very reputably in a quiet way ; but the shadow 



106 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

of the church falls upon it when the sun is low, 
and the five bells are heard in all quarters, tell- 
ing that the organ has begun. If ever I join 
the church of Rome I shall stipulate to be Bishop 
of Noyon on the Oise. 



DOWN THE OISE 

TO COMPIEGNE. 

The most patient people grow weary at last 
with being continually wetted with rain; except, 
of course, in the Scotch Highlands, where there 
are not enough fine intervals to point the differ- 
ence. That was like to be our case the day we 
left Noyon. I remember nothing of the voyage ; 
it was nothing but clay banks, and willows, and 
rain; incessant, pitiless, beating rain; until we 
stopped to lunch at a little inn at Pimprez, where 
the canal ran very near the river. We were so 
sadly drenched that the landlady lit a few sticks 
in the chimney for our comfort; there we sat 
in a steam of vapor lamenting our concerns. 
The husband donned a game-bag and strode out 
to shoot; the wife sat in a far corner watching 
us. I think we were worth looking at. We 
grumbled over the misfortune of La Fere; we 
forecasted other La Feres in the future, — al- 
though things went better with the Cigarette for 
spokesman; he had more aplomb altogether than 
I ; and a dull, positive way of approaching a land- 
lady that carried off the india-rubber bags. Talk- 
ing of La Fere put us talking of the reservists. 

" Reservery," said he, " seems a pretty mean 
way to spend one's autumn holiday." 

" About as mean," returned I, dejectedly, " as 
conoeing." 

107 



108 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

" These gentlemen travel for their pleasure?" 
asked the landlady, with unconscious irony. 

It was too much. The scales fell from our 
eyes. Another wet day, it was determined, and 
we put the boats into the train. 

The weather took the hint. That was our last 
wetting. The afternoon faired up ; grand clouds 
still voyaged in the sky, but now singly, and with 
a depth of blue around their path; and a sunset, 
in the daintiest rose and gold, inaugurated a 
thick night of stars and a month of unbroken 
weather. At the same time, the river began to 
give us a better outlook into the country. The 
banks were not so high, the willows disappeared 
from along the margin, and pleasant hills stood 
all along its course and marked their profile on 
the sky. 

In a little while the canal, coming to its last 
lock, began to discharge its water houses on the 
Oise; so that we had no lack of company to fear. 
Here were all our old friends; the Deo Gratias 
of Conde and the Four Sons of Aymon journeyed 
cheerily down the stream along with us; we ex- 
changed water-side pleasantries with the steers- 
man perched among the lumber, or the driver 
hoarse with bawling to his horses; and the chil- 
dren came and looked over the side as we pad- 
dled by. We had never known all this while 
how much we missed them ; but it gave us a fillip 
to see the smoke from their chimneys. 

A little below this junction we made another 
meeting of yet more account. For there we 
were joined by the Aisne, already a far-travelled 
river and fresh out of Champagne. Here ended 
the adolescence of the Oise! this was his marriage 



DOWN THE OISE 109 

day; thenceforward he had a stately, brimming 
march, conscious of his own dignity and sundry 
dams. He became a tranquil feature in the 
scene. The trees and towns saw themselves in 
him, as in a mirror. He carried the canoes 
lightly on his broad breast; there was no need 
to work hard against an eddy, but idleness be- 
came the order of the day, and mere straightfor- 
ward dipping of the paddle, now on this side, 
now on that, without intelligence or effort. 
Truly we were coming into halcyon weather upon 
all accounts, and were floated towards the sea 
like gentlemen. 

We made Compiegne as the sun was going 
down: a fine profile of a town above the river. 
Over the bridge a regiment was parading to 
the drum. People loitered on the quay, some 
fishing, some looking idly at the stream. And 
as the two boats shot in along the water, we could 
see them pointing them out and speaking one to 
another. We landed at a floating lavatory, 
where the washerwomen were still beating the 
clothes. 



AT COMPIEGNE 

We put up at a big, bustling hotel in Com- 
piegne, where nobody observed our presence. 

Reservery and general militarismus (as the 
Germans call it) was rampant. A camp of con- 
ical white tents without the town looked like a 
leaf out of a picture Bible; sword-belts decorated 
the walls of the cafes, and the streets kept sound- 
ing all day long with military music. It was not 
possible to be an Englishman and avoid a feeling 
of elation; for the men who followed the drums 
were small and walked shabbily. Each man in- 
clined at his own angle, and jolted to his own 
convenience as he went. There was nothing of 
the superb gait with which a regiment of tall 
Highlanders moves behind its music, solemn and 
inevitable, like a natural phenomenon. Who, 
that has seen it, can forget the drum-major pa- 
cing in front, the drummers' tiger-skins, the pip- 
ers' swinging plaids, the strange, elastic rhythm 
of the whole regiment footing it in time, and 
the bang of the drum when the brasses cease, 
and the shrill pipes taking up the martial story 
in their place? 

A girl at school in France began to describe 

one of our regiments on parade to her French 

schoolmates, and as she went on, she told me 

the recollection grew so vivid, she became so 

proud to be a countrywoman of such soldiers, 

and so sorry to be in another country, that her 

no 



AT COMPIEGNE 111 

voice failed her and she burst into tears. I have 
never forgotten that girl, and I think she very 
nearly deserves a statue. To call her a young 
lady, with all its niminy associations, would be 
to offer her an insult. She may rest assured of 
one thing, although she never should marry a 
heroic genefal, never see any great or immediate 
result of her life, she will not have lived in vain 
for her native land. 

But though French soldiers show to ill-advan- 
tage on parade, on the march they are gay, alert, 
and willing, like a troop of fox-hunters. I re- 
member once seeing a company pass through the 
forest of Fontainebleau, on the Chailly road, 
between the Bas Breau and the Reine Blanche. 
One fellow walked a little before the rest, and 
sang a loud, audacious marching song. The rest 
bestirred their feet, and even swung their mus- 
kets in time. A young officer on horseback had 
hard ado to keep his countenance at the words. 
You never saw anything so cheerful and spon- 
taneous as their gait; school-boys do not look 
more eagerly at hare and hounds ; and you would 
have thought it impossible to tire such willing 
marchers. 

My great delight in Compiegne was the town 
hall. I doted upon the town hall. It is a monu- 
ment of Gothic insecurity, all turreted, and gar- 
goyled, and slashed, and bedizened with half a 
score of architectural fancies. Some of the 
niches are gilt and painted ; and in a great square 
panel in the centre, in black relief on a gilt 
ground, Louis XII rides upon a pacing horse, 
with hand on hip, and head thrown back. There 
is royal arrogance in every line of him! the stir- 



112 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

nipped foot projects insolently from the frame; 
the eye is hard and proud ; the very horse seems 
to be treading with gratification over prostrate 
serfs, and to have the breath of the trumpet in 
his nostrils. So rides for ever, on the front of 
the town hall, the good King Louis XII, the 
father of his people. • 

Over the king's head, in the tall centre tur- 
ret, appears the dial of a clock; and high above 
that, three little mechanical figures, each one with 
a hammer in his hand, whose business it is to 
chime out the hours, and halves, and quarters 
for the burgesses of Compiegne. The centre 
figure has a gilt breastplate ; the two others wear 
gilt trunkhose; and they all three have elegant, 
flapping hats like cavaliers. As the quarter ap- 
proaches they turn their heads and look know- 
ingly one to the other; and then, kling go the 
three hammers on three little bells below. The 
hour follows, deep and sonorous, from the in- 
terior of the tower; and the gilded gentlemen 
rest from their labors with contentment. 

I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from 
their manoeuvers, and took good care to miss 
as few performances as possible; and I found 
that even the Cigarette, while he pretended to* 
despise my enthusiasm, was more or less a dev- 
otee himself. There is something highly absurd 
in the exposition of such toys to the outrages 
of winter on a housetop. They would be more 
in keeping in a glass case before a Niirnberg 
clock. Above all, at night, when the children are 
abed, and even grown people are snoring under 
quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave these 
gingerbread figures winking and tinkling to the 



AT COMPIEGNE 113 

stars and the rolling moon ? The gargoyles may 
fitly enough twist their ape-like heads ; fitly enough 
may the potentate bestride his charger, like a cen- 
turion in an old German print of the Via Dolor- 
osa; but the toys should be put away in a box 
among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the 
.children are abroad again to be amused. 

In Compiegne post-office a great packet of 
letters awaited us; and the authorities were, for 
this occasion only, so polite as to hand them 
over upon application. 

In some way, ^ur journey may be said to end 
with this letter-bag at Compiegne. The spell 
was broken. We had partly come home from 
that moment. 

No one should have any correspondence on 
a journey; it is bad enough to have to write; 
but the receipt of letters is the death of all holi- 
day feeling. 

" Out of my country and myself I go.'' I 
wish to take a dive among new conditions for 
awhile, as into another element. I have nothing 
to do with my friends or my affections for the 
time; when I came away, I left my heart at home 
in a desk, or sent it forward with portmanteau 
to await me at my destination. After my jour- 
ney is over, I shall not fail to read your admirable 
letters with the attention they deserve. But I 
have paid all this money, look you, and paddled 
all these strokes, for no other purpose than to 
be abroad; and yet you keep me at home with 
your perpetual communications. You tug the 
string, and I feel that I am a tethered bird. 
You pursue me all over Europe with the little 
vexations that I came away to avoid. There 



114 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

is no discharge in the war of life, I am well 
aware ; but shall there not be so much as a week's 
furlough ? 

We were up by six, the day we were to leave. 
They had taken so little note of us that I hardly 
thought they would have condescended on a bill. 
But they did, with some smart particulars, too; 
and we paid in a civilized manner to an uninter- 
ested clerk, and went out of that hotel, with 
the india-rubber bags, unremarked. No one 
cared to know about us. It is not possible to 
rise before a village; but Compiegne was so 
grown a town that it took its ease in the morn- 
ing; and we were up and away while it was still 
in dressing-gown and slippers. The streets were 
left to people washing door-steps; nobody was 
in full dress but the cavaliers upon the town 
hall; they were all washed with dew, spruce in 
their gilding, and full of intelligence and a sense 
of professional responsibility. Kling went they 
on the bells for the half-past six, as we went by. 
I took it kind of them to make me this parting 
compliment; they never were in better form, not 
even at noon upon a Sunday. 

There was no one to see us off but the early 
washerwomen, — early and late, — who were al- 
ready beating the linen in their floating lavatory 
on the river. They were very merry and mat- 
utinal in their ways; plunged their arms boldly 
in, and seemed not to feel the shock. It would 
be dispiriting to me, this early beginning and 
first cold dabble of a most dispiriting day's work. 
But I believe they would have been as unwilling 
to change days with us as we could be to change 



AT COMPIEGNE 115 

with them. They crowded to the door to watch 
us paddle away into the thin sunny mists upon 
the river; and shouted heartily after us till we 
were through the bridge. 



CHANGED TIMES 

There is a sense in which those mists never 
rose from off our journey; and from that time 
forth they lie very densely in my note-book. 
As long as the Oise was a small, rural river it 
took us near by people's doors, and we could 
hold a conversation with natives in the riparian 
fields. But now that it had grown so wide, the 
life along shore passed us by at a distance. It 
was the same difference as between a great pub- 
lic highway and a country by-path that wanders 
in and out of cottage gardens. We now lay 
in towns, where nobody troubled us with ques- 
tions; we had floated into civilized life, where 
people pass without salutation. In sparsely in- 
habited places we make all we can of each en- 
counter; but when it comes to a city, we keep 
to ourselves, and never speak unless we have 
trodden on a man's toes. In these waters we 
were no longer strange* birds, and nobody sup- 
posed we had travelled farther than from the 
last town. I remember, when we came into 
L'Isle Adam, for instance, how we met dozens 
of pleasure-boats outing it for the afternoon, 
and there was nothing to distinguish the true 
voyager from the amateur, except, perhaps, the 
filthy condition of my sail. The company in 
one boat actually thought they recognized me 
for a neighbor. Was there ever anything more 
wounding? All the romance had come down 

116 



CHANGED TIMES 117 

to that. Now, on the upper Oise, where nothing 
sailed, as a general thing, but fish, a pair of 
canoeists could not be thus vulgarly explained 
away; we were strange and picturesque intrud- 
ers; and out of people's wonder sprang a sort 
of light and passing intimacy all along our route. 
There is nothing but tit for tat in this world, 
though sometimes it be a little difficult to 
trace; for the scores are older than we our- 
selves, and there has never yet been a settling- 
day since things were. You get entertainment 
pretty much in proportion as you give. As long 
as we were a sort of odd wanderers, to be stared 
at and followed like a quack doctor or a cara- 
van, we had no want of amusement in return; 
but as soon as we sank into commonplace our- 
selves, all whom we met were similarly disen- 
chanted. And here is one reason of a dozen 
why the world is dull to dull persons. 

In our earlier adventures there was generally 
something to do, and that quickened us. Even 
the showers of rain had a revivifying effect, 
and shook up the brain from torpor. But- now, 
when the river no longer ran in a proper sense, 
only glided seaward with an even, outright, but 
imperceptible speed, and when the sky smiled 
upon us day after day without variety, we began 
to slip into that golden doze of the mind which 
follows upon much exercise in the open air. I 
have stupefied myself in this way more than once : 
indeed, I dearly love the feeling; but I never 
had it to the same degree as when paddling down 
the Oise. It was the apotheosis of stupidity. 

We ceased reading entirely. Sometimes, when 
I found a new paper, I took a particular pleasure 



118 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

in reading a single number of the current novel ; 
but I never could bear more than three instal- 
ments ; and even the second was a disappointment. 
As soon as the tale became in any way perspicu- 
ous, it lost all merit in my eyes; only a single 
scene, or, as is the way with these jeuilletons, 
half a scene, without antecedent or consequence, 
like a piece of a dream, had the knack of fixing 
my interest. The less I saw of the novel the 
better I liked it: a pregnant reflection. But for 
the most part, as I said, we neither of us read 
anything in the world, and employed the very 
little while we were awake between bed and 
dinner in poring upon maps. I have always been 
fond of maps, and can voyage in an atlas with 
the greatest enjoyment. The names of places 
are singularly inviting; the contour of coasts 
and rivers is enthralling to the eye; and to hit 
in a map upon some place you have heard of be- 
fore makes history a new procession. But we 
thumbed our charts, on those evenings, with the 
blankest unconcern. We cared not a frac- 
tion for this place or that. We stared at the 
sheet as children listen to their rattle, and 
read the names of towns or villages to forget 
them again at once. We had no romance in the 
matter; there was nobody so fancy-free. If you 
had taken the maps away while we were study- 
ing them most intently, it is a fair bet whether 
we might not have continued to study the table 
with the same delight. 

About one thing we were mightily taken up, 
and that was eating. I think I m&de a god of 
my belly. I remember dwelling in imagination 
upon this or that dish till my mouth watered; 



CHANGED TIMES 119 

and long before we got in for the night my ap- 
petite was a clamant, instant annoyance. Some- 
times we paddled alongside for awhile and 
whetted each other with gastronomical fancies 
as we went. Cake and sherry, a homely refec- 
tion, but not within reach upon the Oise, 
trotted through my head for many a mile; and 
once, as we were approaching Verberie, the Ciga- 
rette brought my heart into my mouth by the 
suggestion of oyster patties and Sauterne. 

I suppose none of us recognize the great part 
that is played in life by eating and drinking. 
The appetite is so imperious that we can stom- 
ach the least interesting viands, and pass off a 
dinner hour thankfully enough on bread and 
water; just as there are men who must read 
something, if it were only Bradshaw's guide. 
But there is a romance about the matter, after 
all. Probably the table has more devotees than 
love ; and I am sure that food is much more gen- 
erally entertaining than scenery. Do you give 
in, as Walt Whitman would say, that you are 
any the less immortal for that? The true ma- 
terialism is to be ashamed of what we are. To 
detect the flavor of an olive is no less a piece 
of human perfection than to find beauty in the 
colors of the sunset. 

Canoeing was easy work. To dip the paddle 
at the proper inclination, now right, now left; 
to keep the head down stream; to empty the 
little pool that gathered in the lap of the apron; 
to screw up the eyes against the glittering 
sparkles of sun upon the water; or now and 
again to pass below the whistling tow-rope of 
the Deo Gr atlas of Conde, or Four Sons of 



120 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Aymon, — there was not much art in that; cer- 
tain silly muscles managed it between sleep 
and waking; and meanwhile the brain had a 
whole holiday, and went to sleep. We took in 
at a glance the larger features of the scene, and 
beheld, with half an eye, bloused fishers and 
dabbling washerwomen on the bank. Now and 
again we might be half wakened by some church 
spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail of river 
grass that clung about the paddle and had to be 
plucked off and thrown away. But these lu- 
minous intervals were only partially luminous. A 
little more of us was called into action, but 
never the whole. The central bureau of nerves, 
what in some moods we call Ourselves, enjoyed 
its holiday without disturbance, like a Govern- 
ment Office. The great wheels of intelligence 
turned idly in the head, like flywheels, grinding 
no grist. I have gone on for half an hour at 
a time, counting my strokes and forgetting the 
hundreds. I flatter myself the beasts that perish 
could not underbid that, as a low form of con- 
sciousness. And what a pleasure it was ! What 
a hearty, tolerant temper did it bring about! 
There is nothing captious about a man who has 
attained to this, the one possible apotheosis in 
life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity; and he begins 
to feel dignified and longevous like a tree. 

There was one odd piece of practical meta- 
physics which accompanied what I may call the 
depth, if I must not call it the intensity, of my 
abstraction. What philosophers call me and not 
me, ego and non ego, preoccupied me whether 
I would or no. There was less me and more not 
me than I was accustomed to expect. I looked 



CHANGED TIMES 121 

on upon somebody else, who managed the pad- 
dling; I was aware of somebody else's feet 
against the stretcher ; my own body seemed to have 
no more intimate relation to me than the canoe, 
or the river, or the river banks. Nor this alone : 
something inside my mind, a part of my brain, 
a province of my proper being, had thrown off 
allegiance and set up for itself, or perhaps for 
the somebody else who did the paddling. I had 
dwindled into quite a little thing in a corner 
of myself. I was isolated in my own skull. 
Thoughts presented themselves unbidden; they 
were not my thoughts, they were plainly some 
one else's; and I considered them like a part 
of the landscape. I take it, in short, that I was 
about as near Nirvana as would be convenient 
in practical life; and, if this be so, I make the 
Buddhists my sincere compliments; 'tis an agree- 
able state, not very consistent with mental bril- 
liancy, not exactly profitable in a money point 
of view, but very calm, golden, and incurious, 
and one that sets a man superior to alarms. It 
may be best figured by supposing yourself to 
get dead drunk, and yet keep sober to enjoy it. 
I have a notion that open-air laborers must 
spend a large portion of their days in this ec- 
static stupor, which explains their high com- 
posure and endurance. A pity to go to the ex- 
pense of laudanum when here is a better paradise 
for nothing! 

This frame of mind was the great exploit of 
our voyage, take it all in all. It was the farthest 
piece of travel accomplished. Indeed, it lies so 
far from beaten paths of language that I despair 
of getting the reader into sympathy with the 



122 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

smiling, complacent idiocy of my condition ; when 
ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; 
when trees and church spires along the bank 
surged up from time to time into my notice, like 
solid objects through a rolling cloud-land; when 
the rhythmical swish of boat and paddle in the 
water became a cradle-song to lull my thoughts 
asleep; when a piece of mud on the deck was 
sometimes an intolerable eyesore, and sometimes 
quite a companion for me, and the object of 
pleased consideration; and all the time, with the 
river running and the shores changing upon 
either hand, I kept counting my strokes and for- 
getting the hundreds, the happiest animal in 
France. 



DOWN THE OISE 
Church Interiors. 

We made our first stage below Compiegne to 
Pont Sainte-Maxence. I was abroad a- little after 
six the next morning. The air was biting and 
smelt of frost. In an open place a score of 
women wrangled together over the day's market ; 
and the noise of their negotiation sounded thin 
and querulous, like that of sparrows on a winter's 
morning. The rare passengers blew into their 
hands, and shuffled in their wooden shoes to set 
the blood agog. The streets were full of icy- 
shadow, although the chimneys were smoking 
overhead in golden sunshine. If you wake 
early enough at this season of the year, you 
may get up in December to break your fast in 
June. 

I found my way to the church, for there is 
always something to see about a church, whether 
living worshippers or dead men's tombs; you 
find there the deadliest earnest, and the hollowest 
deceit; and even where it is not a piece of his- 
tory, it will be certain to leak out some contem- 
porary gossip. It was scarcely so cold in the 
church as it was without, but it looked colder. 
The white nave was positively arctic to the eye ; 
and the tawdriness of a continental altar looked 
more forlorn than usual in the solitude and the 
bleak air. Two priests sat in the chancel read- 

123 



124 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

ing and waiting penitents; and out in the nave 
one very old woman was engaged in her de- 
votions. It was a wonder how she was able to 
pass her beads when healthy young people were 
breathing in their palms and slapping their chest ; 
but though this concerned me, I was yet more 
dispirited by the nature of her exercises. She 
went from chair to chair, from altar to altar, 
circumnavigating the church. To each shrine 
she dedicated an equal number of beads and an 
equal length of time. Like a prudent capitalist 
with a somewhat cynical view of the commercial 
prospect, she desired to place her supplications 
in a great variety of heavenly securities. She 
would risk nothing on the credit of any single 
intercessor. Out of the whole company of 
saints and angels, not one but was to suppose 
himself her champion elect against the Great As- 
sizes! I could only think of it as a dull, trans- 
parent jugglery, based upon unconscious unbelief. 
She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw ; 
no more than bone and parchment, curiously 
put together. Her eyes, with which she inter- 
rogated mine, were vacant of sense. It depends 
on what you call seeing, whether you might not 
call her blind. Perhaps she had known love: 
perhaps borne children, suckled them, and given 
them pet names. But now that was all gone by, 
and had left her neither happier nor wiser; and 
the best she could do with her mornings was to 
come up here into the cold church and juggle 
for a slice of heaven. It was not without a gulp 
that I escaped into the streets and the keen morn- 
ing air. Morning? why, how tired of it she 
would be before night! and if she did not sleep, 



DOWN THE OISE 125 

how then? It is fortunate that not many of us 
are brought up publicly to justify our lives at 
the bar of threescore years and ten; fortunate 
that such a number are knocked opportunely on 
the head in what they call the flower of their 
years, and go away to suffer for their follies in pri- 
vate somewhere else. Otherwise, between sick 
children and discontented old folk, we might be 
put out of all conceit of life. 

I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during 
that day's paddle: the old devotee stuck in my 
throat sorely. But I was soon in the seventh 
heaven of stupidity; and knew nothing but that 
somebody was paddling a canoe, while I was 
counting his strokes and forgetting the hundreds. 
I used sometimes to be afraid I should remember 
the hundreds ; which would have made a toil of a 
pleasure ; but the terror was chimerical, they went 
out of my mind by enchantment, and I. knew no 
more than the man in the moon about my only 
occupation. 

At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left 
the canoes in another floating lavatory, which, 
as it was high noon, was packed with washer- 
women, red-handed and loud-voiced; and they 
and their broad jokes are about all I remember 
of the place. I could look up my history books, 
if you were very anxious, and tell you a date 
or two; for it figured rather largely in the 
English wars. But I prefer to mention a girls' 
boarding-school, which had an interest for us 
because it was a girls' boarding-school, and be- 
cause we imagined we had rather an interest 
for it. At least, there were the girls about the 
garden ; and here were we on the river ; and there 



126 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

was more than one handkerchief waved as we 
went by. It caused quite a stir in my heart ; and 
yet how we should have wearied and despised 
each other, these girls and I, if we had been intro- 
duced at a croquet party ! But this is a fashion 
I love : to kiss the hand or wave a handkerchief 
to people I shall never see again, to play with 
possibility, and knock in a peg for fancy to hang 
upon. It gives the traveller a jog, reminds him 
that he is not a traveller everywhere, and that 
his journey is no more than a siesta by the 
way on the real march of life. 

The church at Creil was a nondescript place 
in the inside, splashed with gaudy lights from 
the windows, and picked out with medallions of 
the Dolorous Way. But there was one oddity, 
in the way of an ex voto, which pleased me 
hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat, swung 
from the vault, with a written aspiration that 
God should conduct the St. Nicholas of Creil to 
a good haven. The thing was neatly executed, 
and would have made the delight of a party of 
boys on the water-side. But what tickled me was 
the gravity of the peril to be conjured. You 
might hang up the model of a sea-going ship, 
and welcome: one that is to plough a furrow 
round the world, and visit the tropic or the frosty 
poles, runs dangers that are well worth a candle 
and a mass. But the St. Nicholas of Creil, 
which was to be tugged for some ten years by 
patient draught horses, in a weedy canal, with 
the poplars chattering overhead, and the skipper 
whistling at the tiller; which was to do all its 
errands in green inland places, and never got out 
of sight of a village belfry in all its cruising; 



DOWN THE OISE 127 

why, you would have thought if anything could 
be done without the intervention of Providence, 
it would be that ! But perhaps the skipper was a 
humorist : or perhaps a prophet, reminding people 
of the seriousness of life by this preposterous 
token. 

At Creil, as at Noyon, St. Joseph seemed a 
favorite saint on the score of punctuality. Day 
and hour can be specified ; and grateful people do 
not fail to specify them on a votive tablet, when 
prayers have been punctually and neatly an- 
swered. Whenever time is a consideration, St. 
Joseph is the proper intermediary. I took a sort 
of pleasure in observing the vogue he had in 
France, for the good man plays a very small part 
in my religion at home. Yet I could not help 
fearing that, where the saint is so much com- 
mended for exactitude, he will be expected to be 
very grateful for his tablet. 

This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not 
of great importance anyway. Whether people's 
gratitude for the good gifts that come to them 
be wisely received or dutifully expressed is a 
secondary matter, after all, so long as they feel 
gratitude. The true ignorance is when a man 
does not know that he has received a good gift, 
or begins to imagine that he has got it for him- 
self. The self-made man is the funniest wind- 
bag after all ! There is a marked difference be- 
tween decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the 
gas in a metropolitan back-parlor with a box of 
patent matches; and, do what we will, there is 
always something made to our hand, if it were 
only four fingers. 

But there was something worse than foolish- 



128 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

ness placarded in Creil Church. The Associa- 
tion of the Living Rosary (of which I had never 
previously heard) is responsible for that. This 
association was founded, according to the printed 
advertisement, by a brief of Pope Gregory Six- 
teenth, on the 17th of January, 1832: according 
to a colored bas-relief, it seems to have been 
founded, some time or other, by the Virgin giv- 
ing one rosary to St. Dominic, and the Infant 
Saviour giving another to St. Catherine of Si- 
enna. Pope Gregory is not so imposing, but 
he is nearer hand. I could not distinctly make 
out whether the association was entirely devo- 
tional, or had an eye to good works; at least it 
is highly organized; the names of fourteen ma- 
trons and misses were filled in for each week of 
the months as associates, with one other, gen- 
erally a married woman, at the top for Zelatrice, 
the choragus of the band. Indulgences, plenary 
and partial, follow on the performance of the 
duties of the association. " The partial indul- 
gences £re attached to the recitation of the rosary. " 
On " the recitation of the required dizaine," 
a partial indulgence promptly follows. When 
people serve the kingdom of Heaven with a pass- 
book in their hands, I should always be afraid 
lest they should carry the same commercial spirit 
into their dealings with their fellow-men, which 
would make a sad and sordid business of this 
life. 

There is one more article, however, of happier 
import. " All these indulgences," it appeared, 
" are applicable to souls in purgatory." For 
God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to 
the souls in purgatory without delay! Burns 



DOWN THE OISE 129 

would take no hire for his last songs, preferring 
to serve his country out of unmixed love. Sup- 
pose you were to imitate the exciseman, mes- 
dames, and even if the souls in purgatory were 
not greatly bettered, some souls in Creil upon 
the Oise would find themselves none the worse 
either here or hereafter. 

I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these 
notes, whether a Protestant born and bred is 
in a fit state to understand these signs, and do 
them what justice they deserve; and I cannot 
help answering that he is not. They cannot look 
so merely ugly and mean to the faithful as they 
do to me, I see that as clearly as a proposition 
in Euclid. For these believers are neither weak 
nor wicked. They can put up their tablet com- 
mending St. Joseph for his despatch as if he were 
still a village carpenter; they can "recite the 
required dizaine" and metaphorically pocket the 
indulgences as if they had done a job for heaven; 
and then they can go out and look down un- 
abashed upon this wonderful river flowing by, 
and up without confusion at the pinpoint stars, 
which are themselves great worlds full of flow- 
ing rivers greater than the Oise. I see it as 
plainly, I say, as a proposition in Euclid, that 
my Protestant mind had missed the point, and 
that there goes with these deformities some 
higher and more religious spirit than I dream. 

I wonder if other people would make the same 
allowances for me? Like the ladies of Creil, 
having recited my rosary of toleration, I look 
for my indulgence on the spot. 



pr£cy and the marionettes 

We made Precy about sundown. The plain 
is rich with tufts of poplar. In a wide, lumi- 
nous curve the Oise lay under the hillside. A 
faint mist began to rise and confound the dif- 
ferent distances together. There was not a sound 
audible but that of the sheep-bells in some mead- 
ows by the river, and the creaking of a cart 
down the long road that descends the hill. The 
villas in their gardens, the shops along the street, 
all seemed to have been deserted the day before; 
and I felt inclined to walk discreetly as one feels 
in a silent forest. All of a sudden we came round 
a corner, and there, in a little green round the 
church, was a bevy of girls in Parisian costumes 
playing croquet. Their laughter and the hollow 
sound of ball and mallet made a cheery stir in the 
neighborhood; and the look of these slim figures, 
all corseted and ribboned, produced an answer- 
able disturbance in our hearts. We were with- 
in sniff of Paris, it seemed. And here were 
females of our own species playing croquet, 
just as if Precy had been a place in real 
life instead of a stage in the fairyland of travel. 
For, to be frank, the peasant-woman is scarcely 
to be counted as a woman at all, and after hav- 
ing passed by such a succession of people in pet- 
ticoats digging, and hoeing, and making dinner, 
this company of coquettes under arms made quite 

130 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 131 

a surprising feature in the landscape, and con- 
vinced us at once of being fallible males. 

The inn at Precy is the worst inn in France. 
Not even in Scotland have I found worse fare. 
It was kept by a brother and sister, neither of 
whom was out of their teens. The sister, so to 
speak, prepared a meal for us; and the brother, 
who had been tippling, came in and brought with 
him a tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we ate. 
We found pieces of loo-warm pork among the 
salad, and pieces of unknown yielding substance 
in the ragout. The butcher entertained us with 
pictures of Parisian life, with which he professed 
himself well acquainted; the brother sitting the 
while on the edge of the billiard table, toppling 
precariously, and sucking the stump of a cigar. 
In the midst of these diversions bang went a 
drum past the house, and a hoarse voice began is- 
suing a proclamation. It was a man with mar- 
ionettes announcing a performance for that even- 
ing. 

He had set up his caravan and lighted his 
candles on another part of the girls' croquet green, 
under one of those open sheds which are so com- 
mon in France to shelter markets; and he and 
his wife, by the time we strolled up there, were 
trying to keep order with the audience. 

It was the most absurd contention. The 
show-people had set out a certain number of 
benches ; and all who sat upon them were to pay 
a couple of sous for the accommodation. They 
were always quite full — a bumper house — as 
long as nothing was going forward; but let the 
show-woman appear with an eye to a collection, 
and at the first rattle of the tambourine the au- 



132 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

dience slipped off the seats and stood round on 
the outside, with their hands in their pockets. 
It certainly would have tried an angel's temper. 
The showman roared from the proscenium; he 
had been all over France, and nowhere, no- 
where, " not even on the borders of Germany," 
had he met with such misconduct. Such thieves, 
and rogues, and rascals as he called them ! And 
now and again the wife issued on another round, 
and added her shrill quota to the tirade. I re- 
marked here, as elsewhere, how far more copious 
is the female mind in the material of insult. 
The audience laughed in high good-humor over 
the man's declamations; but they bridled and 
cried aloud under the woman's pungent sallies. 
She picked out the sore points. She had the 
honor of the village at her mercy. Voices 
answered her angrily out of the crowd, and re- 
ceived a smarting retort for their trouble. A 
couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly 
paid for their seats, waxed very red and indig- 
nant, and discoursed to each other audibly about 
the impudence of these mountebanks; but as 
soon as the show- woman caught a whisper of 
this she was down upon them with a swoop; if 
mesdames could persuade their neighbors to act 
with common honesty, the mountebanks, she as- 
sured them, would be polite enough; mesdames 
had probably had their bowl of soup, and, per- 
haps, a glass of wine that evening; the mounte- 
banks, also, had a taste for soup, and did not 
choose to have their little earnings stolen from 
them before their eyes. Once, things came as 
far as a brief personal encounter between the 
showman and some lads, in which the former 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 133 

went down as readily as one of his own mar- 
ionettes to a peal of jeering laughter. 

I was a good deal astonished at this scene, be- 
cause I am pretty well acquainted with the ways 
of French strollers, more or less artistic; and 
have always found them singularly pleasing. 
Any stroller must be dear to the right-thinking 
heart; if it were only as a living protest against 
offices and the mercantile spirit, and as some- 
thing to remind us that life is not by necessity 
the kind of thing we generally make it. Even 
a German band, if you see it leaving town in 
the early morning for a campaign in country 
places, among trees and meadows, has a ro- 
mantic flavor for the imagination. There is no- 
body under thirty so dead but his heart will stir 
a little at sight of a gypsies' camp. " We are 
not cotton-spinners all," or, at least, not all 
through. There is some life in humanity yet; 
and youth will now and again find a brave word 
to say in dispraise of riches, and throw up a sit- 
uation to go strolling with a knapsack. 

An Englishman has always special facilities 
for intercourse with French gymnasts; for Eng- 
land is the natural home of gymnasts. This or 
that fellow, in his tights and spangles, is sure to 
know a word or two of English, to have drunk 
English aff-n-aff, and, perhaps, performed in an 
English music hall. He is a countryman of 
mine by profession. He leaps like the Belgian 
boating-men to the notion that I must be an 
athlete myself. 

But the gymnast is not my favorite; he has 
little or no tincture of the artist in his composi- 
tion; his soul is small and pedestrian for the 



134 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

most part, since his profession makes no call 
upon it, and does not accustom him to high 
ideas. But if a man is only so much of an actor 
that he can stumble through a farce, he is made 
free of a new order of thoughts. He has some- 
thing else to think about beside the money-box. 
He has a pride of his own, and, what is of far 
more importance, he has an aim before him that 
he can never quite attain. He has gone upon a 
pilgrimage that will last him his life long, be- 
cause there is no end to it short of perfection. 
He will better himself a little day by day; or, 
even if he has given up the attempt, he will al- 
ways remember that once upon a time he had 
conceived this high ideal, that once upon a time 
he fell in love with a star. " 'Tis better 
to have loved and lost." Although the moon 
should have nothing to say to Endymion, al- 
though he should settle down with Audrey and 
feed pigs, do you not think he would move with 
a better grace and cherish higher thoughts to the 
end? The louts he meets at church never had a 
fancy above Audrey's snood; but there is a 
reminiscence in Endymion's heart that, like a 
spice, keeps it fresh and haughty. 

To be even one of the outskirters of art leaves 
a fine stamp on a man's countenance. I remem- 
ber once dining with a party in the inn at Chateau 
Landon. Most of them were unmistakable bag- 
men; others well-to-do peasantry; but there was 
one young fellow in a blouse, whose face stood 
out from among the rest surprisingly. It looked 
more finished; more of the spirit looked out 
through it; it had a living expressive air, and 
you could see that his eyes took things in. My 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 135 

companion and I wondered greatly who and what 
he could be. It was fair time in Chateau Lan- 
don, and when we went along to the booths we 
had our question answered; for there was our 
friend busily fiddling for the peasants to caper 
to. He was a wandering violinist. 

A troop of strollers once came to the inn 
where I was staying, in the department of Seine 
et Marne. There were a father and mother ; two 
daughters, brazen, blowsy hussies, who sang and 
acted, without an idea of how to set about either; 
and a dark young man, like a tutor, a recalcitrant 
house-painter, who sang and acted not amiss. 
The mother was the genius of the party, so far 
as genius can be spoken of with regard to such 
a pack of incompetent humbugs ; and her husband 
could not find words to express his admiration 
for her comic countryman. " You should see 
my old woman/' said he, and nodded his beery 
countenance. One night they performed in the 
stable-yard with flaring lamps: a wretched ex- 
hibition, coldly looked upon by a village audience. 
Next night, as soon as the lamps were lighted,, 
there came a plump of rain, and they had to 
sweep away their baggage as fast as possible, and 
make off to the barn, where they harbored, cold, 
wet, and supperless. In the morning a dear 
friend of mine, who has as warm a heart for 
strollers as I have myself, made a little collection, 
and sent it by my hands to comfort them for 
their disappointment. I gave it to the father; 
he thanked me cordially, and we drank a cup to- 
gether in the kitchen, talking of roads and au- 
diences, and hard times. fc 

When I was going, up got my old stroller, and 



136 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

off with his hat. " I am afraid," said he, " that 
Monsieur will think me altogether a beggar ; but 
I have another demand to make upon him." I 
began to hate him on the spot. " We play 
again to-night," he went on. " Of course I shall 
refuse to accept any more money from Monsieur 
and his friends, who have been already so liberal. 
But our programme of to-night is something 
truly creditable; and I cling to the idea that 
Monsieur will honor us with his presence." 
And then, with a shrug and a smile : " Monsieur 
understands, — the vanity of an artist !" Save 
the mark! The vanity of an artist! That is 
the kind of thing that reconciles me to life: a 
ragged, tippling, incompetent old rogue, with the 
manners of a gentleman and the vanity of an 
artist, to keep up his self-respect! 

But the man after my own heart is M. de 
Vauversin. It is nearly two years since I saw 
him first, and indeed I hope I may see him often 
again. Here is his first programme as I found 
it on the breakfast-table, and have kept it ever 
since as a relic of bright days: 

" Mesdames et Messieurs, 

" Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Vauversin 
auront l'honneur de chanter ce soir les morceaux 
suivants : 

" Mademoiselle Ferrario chantera : Mignon — 
Oiseaux Legers — France — Des Frangais dorment 
la — Le chateau bleu — Ou voulezvous aller? 

" M. de Vauversin : Madame Fontaine et M. 
Robinet — Les plongeurs a cheval — Le Mari 
mecontent — Tais-toi, gamin — Mon voisin Torig- 
inal — Heureux comme ga — Comme on est 
trompe." 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 137 

They made a stage at one end of the salle-a- 
manger. And what a sight it was to see M. de 
Vauversin, with a cigarette in his mouth, twang- 
ing a guitar, and following Mademoiselle Fer- 
rario's eyes with the obedient, kindly look of a 
dog! The entertainment wound up with a 
tombola, or auction of lottery tickets : an ad- 
mirable amusement, with all the excitement of 
gambling, and no hope of gain to make you 
ashamed of your eagerness ; for there, all is loss ; 
you make haste to be out of pocket; it is a com- 
petition who shall lose most money for the bene- 
fit of M. de Vauversin and Mademoiselle Fer- 
rario. 

M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a great 
head of black hair, a vivacious and engaging air, 
and a smile that would be delightful if he had 
better teeth. He was once an actor in the 
Chatelet; but he contracted a nervous affection 
from the heat and glare of the footlights, which 
unfitted him for the stage. At this crisis 
Mademoiselle Ferrario, otherwise Mademoiselle 
Rita of the Alcazar, agreed to share his wander- 
ing fortunes. " I could never forget the gen- 
erosity of that lady," said he. He wears trousers 
so tight that it has long been a problem to all 
who knew him how he manages to get in and 
out of them. He sketches a little in water-colors, 
he writes verses : he is the most patient of fisher- 
men, and spent long days at the bottom of the 
inn-garden fruitlessly dabbling a line in the 
clear river. 

You should hear him recounting his experi- 
ences over a bottle of wine ; such a pleasant vein 



138 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

of talk as he has, with a ready smile at his own 
mishaps, and every now and then a sudden grav- 
ity, like a man who should hear the surf roar 
while he was telling the perils of the deep. For 
it was no longer ago than last night, perhaps, 
that the receipts only amounted to a franc and 
a half to cover three francs of railway fare and 
two of board and lodging. The Maire, a man 
worth a million of money, sat in the front seat, 
repeatedly applauding Mademoiselle Ferrario, 
and yet gave no more than three sous the whole 
evening. Local authorities look with such an 
evil eye upon the strolling artist. Alas ! I know 
it well, who have been myself taken for one, and 
pitilessly incarcerated on the strength of the mis- 
apprehension. Once M. de Vauversin visited a 
commissary of police for permission to sing. 
The commissary, who was smoking at his ease, 
politely doffed his hat upon the singer's entrance. 
" Mr. Commissary/' he began, " I am an artist." 
And on went the commissary's hat again. No 
courtesy for the companions of Apollo ! " They 
are as degraded as that," said M. de Vauversin, 
with a sweep of his cigarette. 

But what pleased me most was one outbreak 
of his, when we had been talking all the evening 
of the rubs, indignities, and pinchings of his 
wandering life. Some one said it would be bet- 
ter to have a million of money down, and 
Mademoiselle Ferrario admitted that she would 
prefer that mightily. "Eh bien> y moi non: — 
not I," cried De Vauversin, striking the table 
with his hand. " If any one is a failure in the 
world, is it not I ? I had an art, in which I have 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 139 

done things well, — as well as some, better, per- 
haps, than others; and now it is closed against 
me. I must go about the country gathering cop- 
pers and singing nonsense. Do you think I re- 
gret my life? Do you think I would rather be 
a fat burgess, like a calf ? Not I ! I have had 
moments when I have been applauded on the 
boards: I think nothing of that; but I have 
known in my own mind sometimes, when I had 
not a clap from the whole house, that I had 
found a true intonation, or an exact and speak- 
ing gesture; and then, messieurs, I have known 
what pleasure was, what it was to do a thing 
well, what it was to be an artist. And to know 
what art is, is to have an interest forever, such 
as no burgess can find in his petty concerns. 
Tenez, messieurs je vais voits le dire, — it is like 
a religion." 

Such, making some allowance for the tricks 
of memory and the inaccuracies of translation, 
was the profession of faith of M. de Vauversin. 
I have given him his own name, lest any other 
wanderer should come across him, with his guitar 
and cigarette, and Mademoiselle Ferrario; for 
should not all the world delight to honor this 
unfortunate and loyal follower of the Muses? 
May Apollo send him rhymes hitherto undreamed 
of; may the river be no longer scanty of her 
silver fishes to his lure; may the cold not pinch 
him on long winter rides, nor the village jack- 
in-office affront him with unseemly manners; 
and may he never miss Mademoiselle Ferrario 
from his side, to follow with his dutiful eyes 
and accompany on the guitar! 



140 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

The marionettes made a very dismal entertain- 
ment. They performed a piece called Pyramus 
and Thisbe, in five mortal acts, and all written in 
Alexandrines fully as long as the performers. 
, One marionette was the king ; another the wicked 
counsellor ; a third, credited with exceptional 
beauty, represented Thisbe; and then there were 
guards, and obdurate fathers, and walking 
gentlemen. Nothing particular took place dur- 
ing the two or three acts that I sat out ; but you 
will be pleased to learn that the unities were 
properly respected, and the whole piece, with one 
exception, moved in harmony with classical rules. 
That exception was the comic countryman, a lean 
marionette in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose 
and in a broad patois much appreciated by the 
audience. He took unconstitutional liberties 
with the person of his sovereign; kicked his fel- 
low-marionettes in the mouth with his wooden 
shoes, and whenever none of the versifying 
suitors were about, made love to Thisbe on his 
own account in comic prose. 

This fellow's evolutions, and the little pro- 
logue, in which the showman made a humorous 
eulogium of his troop, praising their indifference 
to applause and hisses, and their single devotion 
to their art, were the only circumstances in the 
whole affair that you could fancy would so much 
as raise a smile. But the villagers of Precy 
seemed delighted. Indeed, so long as a thing is 
an exhibition, and you pay to see it, it is nearly 
certain to amuse. If we were charged so much 
a head for sunsets, or if God sent round a drum 
before the hawthorns came in flower, what work 
should we not make about their beauty! But 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 141 

these things, like good companions, stupid people 
early cease to observe ; and the Abstract Bagman 
tittups past in his spring gig, and is positively 
not aware of the flowers along the lane, or the 
scenery of the weather overhead. 



BACK TO THE WORLD 

Of the next two days' sail little remains in 
my mind, and nothing whatever in my note-book. 
The river streamed on steadily through pleasant 
river-side landscapes. Washerwomen in blue 
dresses, fishers in blue blouses, diversified the 
green banks; and the relation of the two colors 
was like that of the flower and the leaf in the 
forget-me-not. A symphony in forget-me-not; 
I think Theophile Gautier might thus have char- 
acterized that two days' panorama. The sky 
was blue and cloudless ; and the sliding surface of 
the river held up, in smooth places, a mirror to 
the heaven and the shores. The washerwomen 
hailed us laughingly; and the noise of trees and 
water made an accompaniment to our dozing 
thoughts, as we fleeted down the stream. 

The great volume, the indefatigable purpose 
of the river, held the mind in chain. It seemed 
now so sure of its end, so strong and easy in its 
gait, like a grown man full of determination. 
The surf was roaring for it on the sands of 
Havre. For my own part slipping along this 
moving thoroughfare in my fiddle-case of a 
canoe, I also was beginning to grow aweary for 
my ocean. To the civilized man there must 
come, sooner or later, a desire for civilization. 
I was weary of dipping the paddle ; I was weary 
of living on the skirts of life; I wished to be in 
the thick of it once more ; I wished to get to work ; 

142 



BACK TO THE WORLD 143 

I wished to meet people who understood my own 
speech, and could meet with me on equal terms, 
as a man, and no longer as a curiosity. 

And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we 
drew up our keels for the last time out of that 
river of Oise that had faithfully piloted them, 
through rain and sunshine, for so long. For 
so many miles had this fleet and footless beast of 
burthen charioted our fortunes that we turned 
our back upon it with a sense of separation. We 
had a long detour out of the world, but now we 
were back in the familiar places, where life itself 
makes all the running, and we are carried to meet 
adventure without a stroke of the paddle. Now 
we were to return, like the voyager in the play, 
and see what rearrangements fortune had per- 
fected the while in our surroundings; what sur- 
prises stood ready-made for us at home; and 
whither and how far the world had voyaged in 
our absence. You may paddle all day long; 
but it is when you come back at nightfall, and 
look in at the familiar room, that you find Love 
or Death awaiting you beside the stove; and the 
most beautiful adventures are not those we go to 
seek. 



TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
IN THE CAYENNES 



DEDICATION 

My dear Sidney Colvin, 

The journey which this little book is to describe 
was very agreeable and fortunate for me. After 
an uncouth beginning, I had the best of luck to the 
end. But we are all travellers in what John Bun- 
yan calls the wilderness of this world, — all, too, 
travellers with a donkey; and the best that we find 
in our travels is an honest friend. He is a for- 
tunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, 
to find them. They are the end and the reward of 
life. They keep us worthy of ourselves ; and, 
when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent. 

Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular 
letter to the friends of him who writes it. They 
alone take his meaning; they find private messages, 
assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude 
dropped for them in every corner. The public is 
but a generous patron who defrays the postage. 
Yet, though the letter is directed to all, we have an 
old and kindly custom of addressing it on the out- 
side to one. Of what shall a man be proud, if he 
is not proud of his friends ? And so, my dear Sid- 
ney Colvin, it is with pride that I sign myself affec- 
tionately yours, 

R. L. S. 



146 



TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 



VELAY 

"Many are the mighty 
things, and nought is 
more mighty than man. 
. . . He masters by 
his devices the tenant 
of the fields/' — Anti- 
gone. 

" Who hath loosed the 
bands of the wild 
ass?"— Job. 

THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE 
PACK-SADDLE 

In a little place called Le Monastier, in a 
pleasant highland valley fifteen miles from Le 
Puy, I spent about a month of fine days. Mon- 
astier is notable for the making- of lace, for 
drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for 
unparalleled political dissension. There are ad- 
herents of each of the four French parties — Le- 
gitimists, Orleanists, Imperialists, and Republi- 
cans — in this little mountain-town ; and they 
all hate, loathe, decry, and calumniate each other. 
Except for business purposes, or to give each 
other the lie in a tavern brawl, they have laid 
aside even the civility of speech. 'Tis a mere 

147 



148 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

mountain Poland. In the midst of this Babylon 
I found myself a rally ing-point; every one was 
anxious to be kind and helpful to the stranger. 
This was not merely from the natural hospitality 
of mountain people, nor even from the surprise 
with which I was regarded as a man living of his 
own free will in Monastier, when he might just 
as well have lived anywhere else in this big 
world; it arose a good deal from my projected 
excursion southward through the Cevennes. A 
traveller of my sort was a thing hitherto unheard 
of in that district. I was looked upon with con- 
tempt, like a man who should project a journey to 
the moon, but yet with a respectful interest, like 
one setting forth for the inclement Pole. All 
were ready to help in my preparations; a crowd 
of sympathizers supported me at the critical mo- 
ment of a bargain ; not a step was taken but was 
heralded by glasses round and celebrated by a 
dinner or a breakfast. 

It was already hard upon October before I 
was ready to set forth, and at the high altitudes 
over which my road lay there was no Indian 
summer to be looked for. I was determined, if 
not to camp out, at least to have the means of 
camping out in my possession; for there is noth- 
ing more harassing to an easy mind than the ne- 
cessity of reaching shelter by dusk, and the hos- 
pitality of a village inn is not always to be 
reckoned sure by those who trudge on foot. 
A tent, above all for a solitary traveller, is 
troublesome to pitch, and troublesome to strike 
again; and even on the march it forms a con- 
spicuous feature in your baggage. A sleeping- 
sack, on the other hand, is always ready — you 



VELAY 149 

have only to get into it; it serves a double pur- 
pose — a bed by night, a portmanteau by day ; 
and it does not advertise your intention of camp- 
ing out to every curious passer-by. This is a 
huge point. If the camp is not secret, it is but 
a troubled resting-place; you become a public 
character; the convivial rustic visits your bed- 
side after an early supper; and you must sleep 
with one eye open, and be up before the day. 
I decided on a sleeping-sack; and after repeated 
visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for 
myself and my advisers, a sleeping-sack was de- 
signed, constructed, and triumphally brought 
home. 

This child of my invention was nearly six feet 
square, exclusive of two triangular flaps to serve 
as a pillow by night and as the top and bottom 
of the sack by day. I call it " the sack," but it 
was never a sack by more than courtesy: only 
a sort of long roll or sausage, green waterproof 
cart cloth without and blue sheep's fur within. It 
was commodious as a valise, warm and dry for a 
bed. There w r as luxurious turning-room for 
one; and at a pinch the thing might serve for 
two. I could bury myself in it up to the neck ; 
for my head I trusted to a fur cap, with a hood 
to fold down over my ears and a band to pass 
under my nose like a respirator; and in case of 
heavy rain I proposed to make myself a little 
tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, three 
stones, and a bent branch. 

It will readily be conceived that I could not 
carry this huge package on my own, merely hu- 
man, shoulders. It remained to choose a beast 
of burthen. Now, a horse is a fine lady among 



150 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

animals, flighty, timid, delicate in eating, of 
tender health; he is too valuable and too restive 
to be left alone, so that you are chained to your 
brute as to a fellow galley-slave; a dangerous 
road puts him out of his wits; in short, he's an 
uncertain and exacting ally, and adds thirty-fold 
to the troubles of the voyager. What I re- 
quired was something cheap and small and hardy, 
and of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all 
these requisites pointed to a donkey. 

There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of 
rather unsound intellect according to some, much 
followed by street-boys, and known to fame as 
Father Adam. Father Adam had a cart, and 
to draw the cart a diminutive she-ass, not much 
bigger than a dog, the color of a mouse, with a 
kindly eye and a determined under- jaw. There 
was something neat and high-bred, a quakerish 
elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on 
the spot. Our first interview was in Monastier 
market-place. To prove her good temper, one 
child after another was set upon her back to 
ride, and one after another went head over heels 
into the air; until a want of confidence began 
to reign in youthful bosoms, and the experiment 
was discontinued from a dearth of subjects. I 
was already backed by a deputation of my 
friends; but as if this were not enough, all the 
buyers and sellers came round and helped me in 
the bargain ; and the ass and I and Father Adam 
were the centre of a hubbub for near half an 
hour. At length she passed into my service for 
the consideration of sixty-five francs and a glass 
of brandy. The sack had already cost eighty 
francs and two glasses of beer; so that Mo- 



VELAY 151 

destine, as I instantly baptized her, was upon 
all accounts the cheaper article. Indeed, that was 
as it should be ; for she was only an appurtenance 
of my mattress, or self-acting bedstead on four 
castors. 

I had a last interview with Father Adam in a 
billiard-room at the witching hour of dawn, when 
I administered the brandy. He professed him- 
self greatly touched by the separation, and de- 
clared he had often bought white bread for the 
donkey when he had been content with black 
bread for himself; but this, according to the best 
authorities, must have been a flight of fancy. 
He had a name in the village for brutally mis- 
using the ass; yet it is certain that he shed a 
tear, and the tear made a clean mark down one 
cheek. 

By the advice of a fallacious local saddler, a 
leather pad was made for me with rings to fasten 
on my bundle; and I thoughtfully completed my 
kit and arranged my toilette. By way of 
armory and utensils, I took a revolver, a little 
spirit-lamp and pan, a lantern and some half- 
penny candles, a jack-knife and a large leather 
flask. The main cargo consisted of two entire 
changes of warm clothing — besides my travel- 
ling wear of country velveteen, pilot-coat, and 
knitted spencer — some books, and my railway- 
rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, 
made me a double castle for cold nights. The 
permanent larder was represented by cakes of 
chocolate and tins of Bologna sausage. All this, 
except what I carried about my person, was 
easily stowed into the sheepskin bag; and by 
good fortune I threw in my empty knapsack, 



152 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

rather for convenience of carriage than from 
any thought that I should want it on my journey. 
For more immediate needs, I took a leg of cold 
mutton, a bottle of Beaujolais, an empty bottle to 
carry milk, an egg-beater, and a considerable 
quantity of black bread and white, like Father 
Adam, for myself and donkey, only in my scheme 
of things the destinations were reversed. 

Monastrians, of all shades of thought in poli- 
tics, had agreed in threatening me with many 
ludicrous misadventures, and with sudden death 
in many surprising forms. Cold, wolves, rob- 
bers, above all the nocturnal practical joker, were 
daily and eloquently forced on my attention. 
Yet in these vaticinations, the true, patent danger 
was left out. Like Christian, it was from my 
pack I suffered by the way. Before telling my 
own mishaps, let me, in two words, relate the 
lesson of my experience. If the pack is well 
strapped at the ends, and hung at full length — 
not doubled, for your life — across the pack- 
saddle, the traveller is safe. The saddle will 
certainly not fit, such is the imperfection of our 
transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend 
to overset ; but there are stones on every roadside, 
and a man soon learns the art of correcting any 
tendency to overbalance with a well-adjusted 
stone. 

On the day of my departure I was up a little 
after five; by six, we began to load the donkey; 
and ten minutes after, my hopes were in the 
dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's 
back for half a moment. I returned it to its 
maker, with whom I had so contumelious a pas- 
sage that the street outside was crowded from 



VELAY 153 

wall to wall with gossips looking on and listen- 
ing. The pad changed hands with much vivac- 
ity; perhaps it would be more descriptive to say 
that we threw it at each other's heads ; and, at 
any rate, we were very warm and unfriendly, and 
spoke with a deal of freedom. 

I had a common donkey pack-saddle — a barde, 
as they call it — fitted upon Modestine; and 
once more loaded her with my effects. The 
double sack, my pilot-coat ( for it was warm, and 
I was to walk in my waistcoat), a great bar of 
black bread, and an open basket containing the 
white bread, the mutton, and the bottles, were all 
corded together in a very elaborate system of 
knots, and I looked on the result with fatuous 
content. In such a monstrous deck-cargo, all 
poised above the donkey's shoulders, with nothing 
below to balance, on a brand-new pack-saddle 
that had not yet been worn to fit the animal, and 
fastened with brand-new girths that might be 
expected to stretch and slacken by the way, even 
a very careless traveller should have seen disaster 
brewing. That elaborate system of knots, again, 
was the work of too many sympathizers to be 
very artfully designed. It is true they tightened 
the cords with a will ; as many as three at a time 
would have a foot against Modestine's quarters, 
and be hauling with clenched teeth ; but I learned 
afterwards that one thoughtful person, without 
any exercise of force, can make a more solid job 
than half-a-dozen heated and enthusiastic grooms. 
I was then but a novice ; even after the misadven- 
ture of the pad nothing could disturb my se- 
curity, and I went forth from the stable-door as 
* an ox goeth to the slaughter. 



THE GREEN DONKEY-DRIVER 

The bell of Monastier was just striking nine as 
I got quit of these preliminary troubles and de- 
scended the hill through the common. As long 
as I was within sight of the windows, a secret 
shame and the fear of some laughable defeat 
withheld me from tampering with Modestine. 
She tripped along upon her four small hoofs 
with a sober daintiness of gait; from time to 
time she shook her ears or her tail ; and she looked 
so small under the bundle that my mind misgave 
me. We got across the ford without difficulty 
— there was no doubt about the matter, she was 
docility itself — and once on the other bank, 
where the road begins to mount through pine- 
woods, I took in my right hand the unhallowed 
staff, and with a quaking spirit applied it to the 
donkey. Modestine brisked up her pace for per- 
haps three steps, and then relapsed into her 
former minuet. Another application had the 
same effect, and so with the third. I am worthy 
the name of an Englishman, and it goes against 
my conscience to lay my hand rudely on a fe- 
male. I desisted, and looked her all over from 
head to foot; the poor brute's knees were trem- 
bling and her breathing was distressed; it was 
plain that she could go no faster on a hill. God 
forbid, thought I, that I should brutalize this 
innocent creature; let her go at her own pace, 
and let me patiently follow. 

154 



VELAY 155 

What that pace was, there is no word mean 
enough to describe; it was something as much 
slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a 
run; it kept me hanging on each foot for an in- 
credible length of time; in five minutes it ex- 
hausted the spirit and set up a fever in all the 
muscles of the leg. And yet I had to keep close 
at hand and measure my advance exactly upon 
hers ; for if I dropped a few yards into the rear, 
or went on a few yards ahead, Modestine came 
instantly to a halt and began to browse. The 
thought that this was to last from here to Alais 
nearly broke my heart. Of all conceivable jour- 
neys, this promised to be the most tedious. I 
tried to tell myself it was a lovely day; I tried 
to charm my foreboding spirit with tobacco; but 
I had a vision ever present to me of the long, long 
roads, up hill and down dale, and a pair of figures 
ever infinitesimally moving, foot by foot, a yard 
to the minute, and, like things enchanted in a 
nightmare, approaching no nearer to the goal. 

In the meantime there came up behind us a 
tall peasant, perhaps forty years of age, of an 
ironical snuffy countenance, and arrayed in the 
green tail-coat of the country. He overtook us 
hand over hand, and stopped to consider our piti- 
ful advance. 

'Your donkey," says he, " is very old?" 

I told him, I believed not. 

Then, he supposed, we had come far. 

I told him, we had but newly left Monastier. 

" Et vous marches comme cal" cried he; and, 
throwing back his head, he laughed long and 
heartily. I watched him, half prepared to feel 
offended, until he had satisfied his mirth; and 



156 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

then, " You must have no pity on these animals," 
said he; and, plucking a switch out of a thicket, 
he began to lace Modestine about the stern-works, 
uttering a cry. The rogue pricked up her ears 
and broke into a good round pace, which she 
kept up without flagging, and without exhibiting 
the least symptom of distress, as long as the 
peasant kept beside us. Her former panting and 
shaking had been, I regret to say, a piece of 
comedy. 

My deus ex machina, before he left me, sup- 
plied some excellent, if inhumane, advice; pre- 
sented me with the switch, which he declared 
she would feel more tenderly than my cane ; and 
finally taught me the true cry or masonic word of 
donkey-drivers, " Proot !" All the time, he re- 
garded me with a comical incredulous air, which 
was embarrassing to confront; and smiled over 
my donkey-driving, as I might have smiled over 
his orthography, or his green tail-coat. But it 
was not my turn for the moment. 

I was proud of my new lore, and thought I h&d 
learned the art to perfection. And certainly 
Modestine did wonders for the rest of the fore- 
noon, and I had a breathing space to look about 
me. It was Sabbath; the mountain-fields were 
all vacant in the sunshine ; and as we came down 
through St. Martin de Frugeres, the church was 
crowded to the door, there were people kneel- 
ing without upon the steps, and the sound of the 
priest's chanting came forth out of the dim in- 
terior. It gave me a home feeling on the spot; 
for I am a countryman of the Sabbath, so to 
speak, and all Sabbath observances, like a Scotch 
accent, strike in me mixed feelings, grateful and 



VELAY 157 

the reverse. It is only a traveller, hurrying by 
like a person from another planet, who can 
rightly enjoy the peace and beauty of the great 
ascetic feast. The sight of the resting country 
does his spirit good. There is something better 
than music in the wide unusual silence; and it 
disposes him to amiable thoughts like the sound 
of a little river or the warmth of sunlight. 

In this pleasant humor I came down the hill 
to where Goudet stands in the green end of a 
valley, with Chateau Beaufort opposite upon a 
rocky steep, and the stream, as clear as crystal, 
lying in a deep pool between them. Above and 
below, you may hear it wimpling over the stones, 
an amiable stripling of a river, which it seems 
absurd to call the Loire. On all sides, Goudet 
is shut in by mountains; rocky foot-paths, prac- 
ticable at best for donkeys, join it to the outer 
world of France ; and the men and women drink 
and swear, in their green corner, or look up at 
the snow-clad peaks in winter from the threshold 
of their homes, in an isolation, you would think, 
like that of Homer's Cyclops. But it is not so; 
the postman reaches Goudet with the letter-bag; 
the aspiring youth of Goudet are within a day's 
walk of the railway at Le Puy; and here in the 
inn you may find an engraved portrait of the 
host's nephew, Regis Senac, " Professor of 
Fencing and Champion of the two Americas," 
a distinction gained by him, along with the sum 
of five hundred dollars, at Tammany Hall, New 
York, on the ioth April, 1876. 

I hurried over my midday meal, and was early 
forth again. But, alas, as we climbed the in- 
terminable hill upon the other side, " Proot ! " 



158 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

seemed to have lost its virtue. I prooted like a 
lion, I prooted mellifluously like a sucking-dove ; 
but Modestine would be neither softened nor in- 
timidated. She held doggedly to her pace; 
nothing but a blow would move her, and that 
only for a second. I must follow at her heels, 
incessantly belaboring. A moment's pause in this 
ignoble toil, and she relapsed into her own private 
gait. I think I never heard of any one in as 
mean a situation. I must reach the lake of 
Bouchet, where I meant to camp, before sun- 
down, and, to have even a hope of this, I must 
instantly maltreat this uncomplaining animal. 
The sound of my own blows sickened me. Once, 
when I looked at her, she had a faint resemblance 
to a lady of my acquaintance who formerly 
loaded me with kindness; and this increased my 
horror of my cruelty. 

To make matters worse, we encountered an- 
other donkey, ranging at will upon the roadside ; 
and this other donkey chanced to be a gentleman. 
He and Modestine met nickering for joy, and I 
had to separate the pair and beat down their 
young romance with a renewed and feverish 
bastinado. If the other donkey had had the 
heart of a male under his hide, he would have 
fallen upon me tooth and hoof; and this was a 
kind of consolation — he was plainly unworthy 
of Modestine's affection. But the incident sad- 
dened me, as did everything that spoke of my 
donkey's sex. 

It was blazing hot up the valley, windless, with 
vehement sun upon my shoulders; and I had to 
labor so consistently with my stick that the sweat 
ran into my eyes. Every five minutes, too, the 



VELAY 159 

pack, the basket, and the pilot-coat would take 
an ugly slew to one side or the other; and I had 
to stop Modestine, just when I had got her to 
a tolerable pace of about two miles an hour, to 
tug, push, shoulder, and readjust the load. And 
at last, in the village of Ussel, saddle and all, 
the whole hypothec turned round and grovelled 
in the dust below the donkey's belly. She, none 
better pleased, incontinently drew up and seemed 
to smile; and a party of one man, two women, 
and two children came up, and, standing round 
me in a half-circle, encouraged her by their ex- 
ample. 

I had the devil's own trouble to get the thing 
righted; and the instant I had done so, without 
hesitation, it toppled and fell down upon the 
other side. Judge if I was hot! And yet not 
a hand was offered to assist me. The man, in- 
deed, told me I ought to have a package of a dif- 
ferent shape. I suggested, if he knew nothing 
better to the point in my predicament, he might 
hold his tongue. And the good-natured dog 
agreed with me smilingly. It was the most 
despicable fix. I must plainly content myself 
with the pack for Modestine, and take the fol- 
lowing items for my own share of the portage : 
a cane, a quart flask, a pilot- jacket heavily 
weighted in the pockets, two pounds of black 
bread, and an open basket full of meats and 
bottles. I believe I may say I am not devoid of 
greatness of soul; for I did not recoil from this 
infamous burthen. I disposed it, Heaven knows 
how, so as to be mildly portable, and then pro-__ 
ceeded to steer Modestine through the village. 
She tried, as was indeed her invariable habit, to 



160 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

enter every house and every courtyard in the 
whole length; and, encumbered as I was, with- 
out a hand to help myself, no words can render 
an idea of my difficulties. A priest, with six or 
seven others, was examining a church in process 
of repair, and he and his acolytes laughed loudly 
as they saw my plight. I remembered having 
laughed mys.elf when I had seen good men 
struggling with adversity in the person of a 
jackass, and the recollection filled me with peni- 
tence. That was in my old light days, before 
this trouble came upon me. God knows at least 
that I shall never laugh again, thought I. But 
O, what a cruel thing is a farce to those engaged 
in it! 

A little out of the village, Modestine, filled 
with the demon, set her heart upon a by-road, 
and positively refused to leave it. I dropped all 
my bundles, and, I am ashamed to say, struck the 
poor sinner twice across the face. It was pitiful 
to see her lift up her head with shut eyes, as if 
waiting for another blow. I came very near 
crying; but I did a wiser thing than that, and 
sat squarely down by the roadside to consider my 
situation under the cheerful influence of tobacco 
and a nip of brandy. Modestine, in the mean- 
while, munched some black bread with a contrite 
hypocritical air. It was plain that I must make 
a sacrifice to the gods of shipwreck. I threw 
away the empty bottle destined to carry milk; I 
threw away my own white bread, and, disdaining 
to act by general average, kept the black bread 
for Modestine; lastly, I threw away the cold leg 
of mutton and the egg-whisk, although this last 
was dear to my heart. Thus I found room for 



VELAY 161 

everything in the basket, and even stowed the 
boating-coat on the top. By means of an end of 
cord I slung it under one arm ; and although the 
cord cut my shoulder, and the jacket hung almost 
to the ground, it was with a heart greatly lightened 
that I set forth again. 

I had now an arm free to thrash Modestine, 
and cruelly I chastised her. If I were to reach 
the lakeside before dark, she must bestir her little 
shanks to some tune. Already the sun had gone 
down into a windy-looking mist; and although 
there were still a few streaks of gold far off to 
the east' on the hills and the black fir-woods, all 
was cold and grey about our onward path. An 
infinity of little country by-roads led hither and 
thither among the fields. It was the most point- 
less labyrinth. I could see my destination over- 
head, or rather the peak that dominates it; but 
choose as I pleased, the roads always ended by 
turning away from it, and sneaking back towards 
the valley, or northward along the margin of the 
hills. The failing light, the waning color, the 
naked, unhomely, stony country through which I 
was travelling, threw me into some despondency. 
I promise you, the stick was not idle; I think 
every decent step that Modestine took must have 
cost me at least two emphatic blows. There was 
not another sound in the neighborhood but that 
of my unwearying bastinado. 

Suddenly, in the midst of my toils, the load 
once more bit the dust, and, as by enchantment, 
all the cords were simultaneously loosened, and 
the road scattered with my dear possessions. 
The packing was to begin again from the begin- 
ning; and as I had to invent a new and better 



162 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

system, I do not doubt but I lost half an hour. 
It began to be dusk in earnest as I reached a 
wilderness of turf and stones. It had the air of 
being a road which should lead everywhere at 
the same time; and I was falling into something 
not unlike despair when I saw two figures stalk- 
ing towards me over the stones. They walked 
one behind the other like tramps, but their pace 
was remarkable. The son led the way, a tall, 
ill-made, sombre, Scotch-looking man ; the mother 
followed, all in her Sunday's best, with an ele- 
gantly-embroidered ribbon to her cap, and a new 
felt hat atop and proffering, as she strode along 
with kilted petticoats, a string of obscene and 
blasphemous oaths. 

I hailed the son and asked him my direction. 
He pointed loosely west and north-west, mut- 
tered an inaudible comment, and, without slack- 
ing his pace for an instant, stalked on, as he was 
going, right athwart my path. The mother fol- 
lowed without so much as raising her head. I 
shouted and shouted after them, but they con- 
tinued to scale the hillside, and turned a deaf ear 
to my outcries. At last, leaving Modestine by 
herself, I was constrained to run after them, hail- 
ing the while. They stopped as I drew near, the 
mother still cursing; and I could see she was a 
handsome, motherly, respectable-looking woman. 
The son once more answered me roughly and in- 
audibly, and was for setting out again. But this 
time I simply collared the mother, who was near- 
est me, and, apologizing for my violence, declared 
that I could not let them go until they had put me 
on my road. They were neither of them 
offended — rather mollified than otherwise ; told 



VELAY 163 

me I had only to follow them; and then the 
mother asked me what I wanted by the lake at 
such an hour. I replied, in the Scotch manner, 
by inquiring if she had far to go herself. She 
told me, with another oath, that she had an 
hour and a half's road before her. And then, 
without salutation, the pair strode forward again 
up the hillside in the gathering dusk. 

I returned for Modestine, pushed her briskly 
forward, and, after a sharp ascent of twenty 
minutes, reached the edge of a plateau. The 
view, looking back on my day's journey, was 
both wild and sad. Mount Mezenc and the 
peaks beyond St. Julien stood out in trenchant 
gloom against a cold glitter in the east; and the 
intervening field of hills had fallen together into 
one broad wash of shadow, except here and there 
the outline of a wooded sugar-loaf in black, here 
and there a white irregular patch to represent a 
cultivated farm, and here and there a blot where 
the Loire, the Gazeille, or the Lausonne wandered 
in a gorge. 

Soon we w r ere on a highroad, and surprise 
seized on my mind as I beheld a village of some 
magnitude close at hand ; for I had been told that 
the neighborhood of the lake was uninhabited 
except by trout. The road smoked in the twi- 
light with the children driving home cattle from 
the fields; and a pair of mounted stride-legged 
women, hat and cap and all, dashed past me at 
a hammering trot from the canton where they 
had been to church and market. I asked one of 
the children where I was. At Bouchet St. 
Nicolas, he told me. Thither, about a mile south 
of my destination, and on the other side of a re- 



164 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

spectable summit, had these confused roads and 
treacherous peasantry conducted me. My shoul- 
der was cut, so that it hurt sharply; my arm 
ached like a toothache from perpetual beating; 
I gave up the lake and my design to camp, and 
asked for the auberge. 



I HAVE A GOAD 

The auberge of Bouchet St. Nicolas was 
among the least pretentious I have ever visited; 
but I saw many more of the like upon my jour- 
ney. Indeed, it was typical of these French 
highlands. Imagine a cottage of two stories, 
with a bench before the door; the stable and 
kitchen in a suite, so that Modestine and I could 
hear each other dining; furniture of the plain- 
est, earthen floors, a single bed-chamber for 
travellers, and that without any convenience but 
beds. In the kitchen cooking and eating go 
forward side by side, and the family sleep at 
night. Any one w^hoJias a fancy to wash must 
do so in public at the common table. The food 
is sometimes spare; hard fish and omelette have 
been my portion more than once ; the wine is of 
the smallest, the brandy abominable to man; 
and the visit of a fat sow, grouting under the 
table and rubbing against your legs, is no im- 
possible accompaniment to dinner. 

But the people of the inn, in nine cases out of 
ten, show themselves friendly and considerate. 
As soon as you cross the doors you cease to be a 
stranger; and although this peasantry are rude 
and forbidding on the highway, they show a tinc- 
ture of kind breeding when you share their 
hearth. At Bouchet, for instance, I uncorked 
my bottle of Beaujolais, and asked the host to 
join me. He would take but little. 

165 



166 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

" I am an amateur of such wine, do you 
see?" he said, " and I am capable of leaving 
you not enough." 

In these hedge-inns the traveller is expected 
to eat with his own knife; unless he ask, no 
other will be supplied: with a glass, a whang 
of bread, and an iron fork, the table is com- 
pletely laid. My knife was cordially admired 
by the landlord of Bouchet, and the spring filled 
him with wonder. 

" I should never have guessed that," he said. 
" I would bet," he added, weighing it in his 
hand, " that this cost you not less than five 
francs," 

When I told him it had cost me twenty, his 
jaw dropped. 

He was a mild, handsome, sensible, friendly 
old man, astonishingly ignorant. His wife, who 
was not so pleasant in her manners, knew how 
to read, although I do not suppose she ever did 
so. She had a share of brains and spoke with 
a cutting emphasis, like one who ruled the roast. 

" My man knows nothing," she said, with an 
angry nod; "he is like the beasts." 

And the old gentleman signified acquiescence 
with his head. There was no contempt on her 
part, and no shame on his; the facts were ac- 
cepted loyally, and no more about the matter. 

I was tightly cross-examined about by jour- 
ney ; and the lady understood in a moment, and 
sketched out what I should put into my book 
when I got home. " Whether people harvest or 
not in such or such a place; if there were for- 
ests; studies of manners; what, for example, I 
and the master of the house say to you; the 



VELAY 161 

beauties of Nature, and all that." And she in- 
terrogated me with a look. 

" It is just that/' said I. 

" You see," she added to her husband, " I 
understood that." 

They were both much interested by the story 
of my misadventures. 

" In the morning," said the husband, " I will 
make you something better than your cane. 
Such a beast as that feels nothing; it is in the 
proverb — dur comme tin dne; you might beat 
her insensible with a cudgel, and yet you would 
arrive nowhere." 

Something better! I little knew what he was 
offering. 

The sleeping-room was furnished with two 
beds. I had one; and I will own I was a little 
abashed to find a young man and his wife and 
child in the act of mounting into the other. This 
was my first experience of the sort; and if I am 
always to feel equally silly and extraneous, I 
pray God it be my last as well. I kept my 
eyes to myself, and know nothing of the woman 
except that she had beautiful arms, and seemed 
no whit abashed by my appearance. As a mat- 
ter of fact, the situation was more trying to me 
than to the pair. A pair keep each other in 
countenance; it is the single gentleman who has 
to blush. But I could not help attributing my 
sentiments to the husband, and sought to con- 
ciliate his tolerance with a cup of brandy from 
my flask. He told me that he was a cooper 
of Alais travelling to St. Etienne in search of 
work, and that in his spare moments he followed 
the fatal calling of a maker of matches. Me 



168 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

he readily enough divined to be a brandy mer- 
chant. 

I was up first in the morning (Monday, Sep- 
tember 23d), and hastened my toilette guiltily, 
so as to leave a clear field for madam, the cooper's 
wife. I drank a bowl of milk, and set off to 
explore the neighborhood of Bouchet. It was 
perishing cold, a grey, windy, wintry morning; 
misty clouds flew fast and low; the wind piped 
over the naked platform; and the only speck of 
color was away behind Mount Mezenc and the 
eastern hills, where the sky still wore the orange 
of the dawn. 

It was five in the morning, and four thousand 
feet above the sea ; and I had to bury my hands 
in my pockets and trot. People were trooping 
out to the labors of the fields by twos and threes, 
and all turned round to stare upon the stranger. 
I had seen them coming back last night, I saw 
them going afield again; and there was the life of 
Bouchet in a nutshell. 

When I came back to the inn for a bit of 
breakfast, the landlady was in the kitchen comb- 
ing out her daughter's hair; and I made her my 
compliments upon its beauty. 

" O no," said the mother; " it is not so beauti- 
ful as it ought to be. Look, it is too fine." 

Thus does a wise peasantry console itself under 
adverse physical circumstances, and, by a start- 
ling democratic process, the defects of the ma- 
jority decide the type of beauty. 

" And where," said I, "is monsieur?" 

" The master of the house is up-stairs," she 
answered, " making you a goad." 

Blessed be the man who invented goads! 



VELAY 169 

Blessed the innkeeper of Bouchet St. Nicolas, 
who introduced me to their use! This plain 
wand, with an eighth of an inch of pin, was 
indeed a sceptre when he put it in my hands. 
Thenceforward Modestine was my slave. A 
prick, and she passed the most inviting stable- 
door. A prick, and she broke forth into a gal- 
lant little trotlet that devoured the miles. It 
was not a remarkable speed, when all was said; 
and we took four hours to cover ten miles at 
the best of it. But what a heavenly change 
since yesterday ! No more wielding of the ugly 
cudgel; no more flailing with an aching arm; 
no more broadsword exercise, but a discreet and 
gentlemanly fence. And what although now 
and then a drop of blood should appear on 
Modestine's mouse-colored wedge-like rump? I 
should have preferred it otherwise, indeed: but 
yesterday's exploits had purged my heart of all 
humanity. The perverse little devil, since she 
would not be taken with kindness, must even go 
with pricking. 

It was bleak and bitter cold, and, except a 
cavalcade of stride-legged ladies and a pair of 
post-runners, the road was dead solitary all the 
way to Pradelles. I scarce remember an inci- 
dent but one. A handsome foal with a bell about 
his neck came charging up to us upon a stretch 
of common, sniffed the air martially as one about 
to do great deeds, and, suddenly thinking other- 
wise in his green young heart, put about and gal- 
loped off as he had come, the bell tinkling in the 
wind. For a long while afterwards I saw his 
noble attitude as he drew up, and heard the note 
of his bell; and when I struck the highroad, the 



170 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

song of the telegraph-wires seemed to continue the 
same music. 

Pradelles stands on a hillside, high above the 
Allier, surrounded by rich meadows. They were 
cutting aftermath on all sides, which gave the 
neighborhood, this gusty autumn morning, an 
untimely smell of hay. On the opposite bank of 
the Allier the land kept mounting for miles to 
the horizon; a tanned and sallow autumn land- 
scape, with black blots of fir- wood and white 
roads wandering through the hills. Over all 
this the clouds shed a uniform and purplish 
shadow, sad and somewhat menacing, exaggera- 
ting height and distance, and throwing into still 
higher relief the twisted ribbons of the highway. 
It was a cheerless prospect, but one stimulating 
to a traveller. For I was now upon the limit 
of Velay, and all that I beheld lay in another 
county — wild Gevaudan, mountainous, unculti- 
vated, and but recently disforested from terror 
of the wolves. 

Wolves, alas, like bandits, seem to flee the 
traveller's advance ; and you may trudge through 
all our comfortable Europe, and not meet with 
an adventure worth the name. But here, if any- 
where, a man was on the frontiers of hope. For 
this was the land of the ever-memorable Beast, 
the Napoleon Buonaparte of wolves. What a 
career was his! He lived ten months at free 
quarters in Gevaudan and Vivarais ; he ate women 
and children and " shepherdesses celebrated for 
their beauty " ; he pursued armed horsemen ; he 
has been seen at broad noonday chasing a post- 
chaise and outrider along the king's highroad, 
and chaise and outrider fleeing before him at the 



VELAY 171 

gallop. He was placarded like a political of- 
fender, and ten thousand francs were offered 
for his head. And yet, when he was shot and 
sent to Versailles, behold! a common wolf, and 
even small for that. " Though I could reach 
from pole to pole/' said Alexander Pope; the 
little corporal shook Europe; and if all wolves 
had been as this wolf, they would have changed 
the history of man. M. Elie Berthet has made 
him the hero of a novel, which I have read, and 
do not wish to read again. 

I hurried over my lunch, and was proof against 
the landlady's desire that* I should visit our Lady 
of Pradelles, " who performed many miracles, 
although she was of wood " ; and before three 
quarters of an hour I was goading Modestine 
down the steep descent that leads to Langogne 
on the Allien On both sides of the road, in 
big dusty fields, farmers were preparing for next 
spring. Every fifty yards a yoke of great-necked 
stolid oxen were patiently haling at the plough. 
I saw one of these mild, formidable servants of 
the glebe, who took a sudden interest in Modes- 
tine and me. The furrow down which he was 
journeying lay at an angle to the road, and his 
head was solidly fixed to the yoke like those of 
caryatides below a ponderous cornice; but he 
screwed round his big honest eyes and followed 
us with a ruminating look, until his master bade 
him turn the plough and proceed to reascend the 
field. From all these furrow r ing ploughshares, 
from the feet of oxen, from a laborer here and 
there who was breaking the dry clods with a hoe, 
the wind carried away a thin dust like so much 
smoke. It was a fine, busy, breathing, rustic 



172 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

landscape; and as I continued to descend, the 
highlands of Gevaudan kept mounting in front of 
me against the sky. 

I had crossed the Loire the day before; now 
I was to cross the Allier; so near are these two 
confluents in their youth. Just at the bridge 
of Langogne, as the long-promised rain was be- 
ginning to fall, a lassie of some seven or eight ad- 
dressed me in the sacramental phrase, " D'ou'st 
que vous venez?" She did it with so high an 
air that she set me laughing; and this cut her 
to the quick. She was evidently one who 
reckoned on respect, and stood looking after me 
in silent dudgeon, as I crossed the bridge and 
entered the county of Gevaudan. 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 

" The way also here was 
very wearisome 
through dirt and slab- 
biness; nor was there 
on all this ground so 
much as one inn or 
victualling- house 
wherein to refresh the 
feebler s o r t"— Pil- 
grim's Progress. 

A CAMP IN THE DARK 

The next day (Tuesday, September 24th), it 
was two o'clock in the afternoon before I got 
my journal written up and my knapsack repaired, 
for I was determined to carry my knapsack in 
the future and have no more ado with baskets; 
and half an hour afterwards I set out for Le 
Cheylard L'Eveque, a place on the borders of 
the forest of Mercoire. A man, I was told, 
should walk there in an hour and a half; and I 
thought it scarce too ambitious to suppose that 
a man encumbered with a donkey might cover 
the same distance in four hours. 

All the way up the long hill from Langogne 
it rained and hailed alternately; the wind kept 
freshening steadily, although slowly; plenti- 
ful hurrying clouds — some dragging veils of 
straight rain-shower, others massed and lumi- 

173 



174 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

nous, as though promising snow — careered out 
of the north and followed me along my way. I 
was soon out of the cultivated basin of the Allier, 
and away from the ploughing oxen, and such- 
like sights of the country. Moor, heathery 
marsh, tracts of rock and pines, woods of birch 
all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and 
there a few naked cottages and bleak fields, — 
these were the characters of the country. Hill 
and valley followed valley and hill ; the little green 
and stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of 
one another, split into three or four, died away 
in marshy hollows, and began again sporadically 
on hillsides or at the borders of a wood. 

There was no direct road to Cheylard, and it 
was no easy affair to make a passage in this un- 
even country and through this intermittent laby- 
rinth of tracks. It must have been about four 
when I struck Sagnerousse, and went on my 
way rejoicing in a sure point of departure. Two 
hours afterwards, the dusk rapidly falling, in 
a lull of the wind, I issued from a fir-wood where 
I had long been wandering, and found, not the 
looked-for village, but another marish bottom 
among rough-and-tumble hills. For some time 
past I had heard the ringing of cattle-bells ahead; 
and now, as I came out of the skirts of the wood, 
I saw near upon a dozen cows and perhaps as 
many more black figures, which I conjectured 
to be children, although the mist had almost un- 
recognizably exaggerated their forms. These 
were all silently following each other round and 
round in a circle, now taking hands, now break- 
ing up with chains and reverences. A dance of 
children appeals to very innocent and lively 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 175 

thoughts; but, at nightfall on the marshes, the 
thing was eerie and fantastic to behold. Even 
I, who am well enough read in Herbert Spencer, 
felt a sort of silence fall for an instant on my 
mind. The next, I was pricking Modestine for- 
ward, and guiding her like an unruly ship through 
the open. In a path, she went doggedly ahead 
of her own accord, as before a fair wind; but 
once on the turf or among heather, and the brute 
became demented. The tendency of lost travel- 
lers to go round in a circle was developed in her 
to the degree of passion, and it took all the steer- 
ing I had in me to keep even a decently straight 
course through a single field. 

While I was thus desperately tacking through 
the bog, children and cattle began to disperse, 
until only a pair of girls remained behind. From 
these I sought direction on my path. The peas- 
antry in general were but little disposed to counsel 
a wayfarer. One old devil simply retired into 
his house, and barricaded the door on my ap- 
proach; and I might beat and shout myself 
hoarse, he turned a deaf ear. Another, hav- 
ing given me a direction which, as I found 
afterwards, I had misunderstood, complacently 
watched me going wrong without adding a sign. 
He did not care a stalk of parsley if I wandered 
all night upon the hills ! As for these two girls, 
they were a pair of impudent sly sluts, with 
not a thought but mischief. One put out Jher 
tongue at me, the other bade me follow the cows ; 
and they both giggled and jogged each other's 
elbows. The Beast of Gevaudan ate about a 
hundred children of this district. I began to 
think of him with sympathy. 



176 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

Leaving the girls, I pushed on through the bog, 
and got into another wood and upon a well- 
marked road. It grew darker and darker. Mo- 
destine, suddenly beginning to smell mischief, 
bettered the pace of her own accord, and from 
that time forward gave me no trouble. It was the 
first sign of intelligence I had occasion to re- 
mark in her. At the same time, the wind fresh- 
ened into half a gale, and another heavy dis- 
charge of rain came flying up out of the north. 
At the other side of the wood I sighted some red 
windows in the dusk. This was the hamlet of 
Fouzilhic; three houses on a hillside, near a 
wood of birches. Here I found a delightful old 
man, who came a little way with me in the rain to 
put me safely on the road for Cheylard. He 
would hear of no reward; but shook his hands 
above his head almost as if in menace, and re- 
fused volubly and shrilly, in unmitigated patois. 

All seemed right* at last. My thoughts began 
to turn upon dinner and a fireside, and my heart 
was agreeably softened in my bosom. Alas, and 
I was on the brink of new and greater miseries! 
Suddenly, at a single swoop, the night fell. I 
have been abroad in many a black night, but 
never in a blacker. A glimmer of rocks, a 
glimmer of the track where it was well beaten, 
a certain fleecy density, or night within night, 
for a tree, — this was all that I could discriminate. 
The sky was simply darkness overhead; even the 
flying clouds pursued their way invisibly to human 
eye-sight. I could not distinguish my hand at 
arm's length from the track, nor my goad, at 
the same distance, from the meadows or the sky. 

Soon the road that I was following split, after 



UPPER G^VAUDAN 177 

the fashion of the country, into three or four in 
a piece of rocky meadow. Since Modestine had 
shown such a fancy for beaten roads, I tried her 
instinct in this predicament. But the instinct of 
an ass is what might be expected from the name ; 
in half a minute she was clambering round and 
round among some boulders, as lost a donkey 
as you would wish to see. I should have camped 
long before had I been properly provided; but 
as this was to be so short a stage, I had brought 
no wine, no bread for myself, and a little over a 
pound for my lady-friend. Add to this, that I 
and Modestine .were both handsomely w r etted by 
the showers. But now, if I could have found 
some water, I should have camped at once in 
spite of all. Water, however, being entirely 
absent, except in the form of rain, I determined 
to return to Fouzilhic, and ask a guide a little 
further on my way — " a little farther lend thy 
guiding hand." 

The thing was easy to decide, hard to ac- 
complish. In this sensible roaring blackness I 
was sure of nothing but the direction of the 
wind. To this I set my face; the road had dis- 
appeared, and I went across country, now in 
marshy opens, now baffled by walls unscalable to 
Modestine, until I came once more in sight of 
some red windows. This time they were dif- 
ferently disposed. It was not Fouzilhic, but 
Fouzilhac, a hamlet little distant from the other 
in space, but worlds away in the spirit of its in- 
habitants. I tied Modestine to a gate, and groped 
forward, stumbling among rocks, plunging mid- 
leg in bog, until I gained the entrance of the vil- 
lage. In the first lighted house there was a 



178 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

woman who would not open to me. She could 
do nothing, she cried to me through the door, 
being alone and lame; but if I would apply at 
the next house, there was a man who could help 
me if he had a mind. 

They came to the next door in force, a man, 
two women, and a girl, and brought a pair of 
lanterns to examine the wayfarer. The man was 
not ill-looking, but had a shifty smile. He leaned 
against the door-post, and heard me state my 
case. All I asked was a guide as far as Cheylard. 

" C'est que, voyez-vous, il fait noir" said he. 

I told him that was just my- reason for re- 
quiring help. 

" I understand that," said he, looking un- 
comfortable ; " mais — c'est — de la peine." 

I was willing to pay, I said. He shook his 
head. I rose as high as ten francs; but he con- 
tinued to shake his head. " Name your own 
price, then," said L 

" Ce n'est pas qa" he said at length, and with 
evident difficulty ; " but I am not going to cross 
the door — mais je ne sortirai pas de la porte" 

I grew a little warm, and asked him what he 
proposed that I should do. 

"Where are you going beyond Cheylard?" 
he asked by way of answer. 

" That is no affair of yours," I returned, for I 
was not going to indulge his bestial curiosity; 
" it changes nothing in my present predicament." 

" C'est vrai, qa" he acknowledged, with a 
laugh ; " oui, c'est vrai. Et d'ou venez-vous? ' 

A better man than I might have felt nettled. 

" O," said I, " I am not going to answer any 
of your questions, so you may spare yourself the 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 179 

trouble of putting them. I am late enough al- 
ready; I want help. If you will not guide me 
yourself, at least help me to find some one else 
who will." 

" Hold on/' he cried suddenly. " Was it not 
you who passed in the meadow while it was 
still day?" 

" Yes, yes," said the girl, whom I had not 
hitherto recognized ; " it was monsieur ; I told 
him to follow the cow." 

" As for you, mademoiselle,'' said I, " you are 
a farceiise" 

" And," added the man, " what the devil have 
you done to be still here? " 

What the devil, indeed! But there I was. 
" The great thing," said I, " is to make an end of 
it " ; and once more proposed that he should help 
me to find a guide. 

" C'est que/' he said again, " c'est que — il fait 
noir." 

"Very well," said I; " take one of your 
lanterns." 

" No," he cried, drawing a thought backward, 
and again intrenching himself behind one of his 
former phrases ; " I will not cross the door." 

I looked at him. I saw unaffected terror 
struggling on his face with unaffected shame; 
he was smiling pitifully and wetting his lip with 
his tongue, like a detected school-boy. I drew a 
brief picture of my state, and asked him what I 
was to do. 

" I don't know," he said; " I will not cross the 
door." 

Here was the Beast of Gevaudan, and no mis- 
take. 



180 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

" Sir/' said I, with my most commanding man- 
ners, " you are a coward." 

And with that I turned my back upon the family 
party, who hastened to retire within their fortifi- 
cations; and the famous door was closed again, 
but not till I had overheard the sound of laughter. 
Filia barbara pater barbarior. Let me say it in 
the plural : the Beasts of Gevaudan. 

The lanterns had somewhat dazzled me, and 
I ploughed distressfully among stones and rub- 
bish-heaps. All the other houses in the village 
were both dark and silent ; and though I knocked 
at here and there a door, my knocking was un- 
answered. It was a bad business; I gave up 
Fouzilhac with my curses. The rain had 
stopped, and the wind, which still kept rising, 
began to dry my coat and trousers. " Very 
well," thought I, " water or no water, I must 
camp." But the first thing was to return to Mo- 
destine. I am pretty sure I was twenty minutes 
groping for my lady in the dark; and if it had 
not been for the unkindly services of the bog, into 
which I once more stumbled, I might have still 
been groping for her at the dawn. My next 
business was to gain the shelter of a wood, for 
the wind was cold as well as boisterous. How, 
in this well-wooded district, I should have been 
so long in finding one, is another of the in- 
soluble mysteries of this day's adventures; but 
I will take my oath that I put near an hour to the 
discovery. 

At last black trees began to show upon my 
left, and, suddenly crossing the road, made a 
cave of unmitigated blackness right in front. I 
call it a cave without exaggeration; to pass be- 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 181 

low that arch of leaves was like entering a 
dungeon. I felt about until my hand encountered 
a stout branch, and to this I tied Modestine, a 
haggard, drenched, desponding donkey. Then 
I lowered my pack, laid it along the wall on the 
margin of the road, and unbuckled the straps. I 
knew well enough where the lantern was; but 
where were the candles? I groped and groped 
among the tumbled articles, and, while I was thus 
groping, suddenly I touched the spirit-lamp. 
Salvation! This would serve my turn as well. 
The wind roared unwearyingly among the trees ; 
I could hear the boughs tossing and the leaves 
churning through half a mile of forest; yet the 
scefie of my encampment was not only as black 
as the pit, but admirably sheltered. At the second 
match the wick caught flame. The light was 
both livid and shifting; but it cut me off from 
the universe, and doubled the darkness of the 
surrounding night. 

I tied Modestine more conveniently for herself, 
and broke up half the black bread for her supper, 
reserving the other half against the morning. 
Then I gathered what I should want within reach, 
took off my wet boots and gaiters, which I 
wrapped in my waterproof, arranged my knap- 
sack for a pillow under the flap of my sleeping- 
bag, insinuated my limbs into the interior, and 
buckled myself in like a bambino. I opened a tin 
of Bologna sausage and broke a cake of choco- 
late, and that was all I had to eat. It may sound 
offensive, but I ate them together, bite by bite, 
by way of bread and meat. All I had to wash 
down this revolting mixture was neat brandy: 
a revolting beverage in itself. But I was rare and 



182 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

hupgry; ate well, and smoked one of the best 
cigarettes in my experience. Then I put a stone 
in my straw hat, pulled the flap of my fur cap 
over my neck and eyes, put my revolver ready 
to my hand, and snuggled well down among the 
sheepskins. 

I questioned at first if I were sleepy, for I 
felt my heart beating faster than usual, as if with 
an agreeable excitement to which my mind re- 
mained a stranger. But as soon as my eyelids 
touched, that subtle glue leaped between them, 
and they would no more come separate. 

The wind among the trees was my lullaby. 
Sometimes it sounded for minutes together with 
a steady even rush, not rising nor abating; and 
again it would swell and burst like a great crash- 
ing breaker, and the trees would patter me all 
over with big drops from the rain of the after- 
noon. Night after night, in my own bedroom 
in the country, I have given ear to this perturb- 
ing concert of the wind among the woods; but 
whether it was a difference in the trees, or the 
lie of the ground, or because I was myself outside 
and in the midst of it, the fact remains that the 
wind sang to a different tune among these woods 
of Gevaudan. I hearkened and hearkened ; and 
meanwhile sleep took gradual possession of my 
body and subdued my thoughts and senses; but 
still my last waking effort was to listen and dis- 
tinguish, and my last conscious state was one of 
wonder at the foreign clamor in my ears. 

Twice in the course of the dark hours — once 
when a stone galled me underneath the^sack, and 
again when the poor patient Modestine, growing 
angry, pawed and stamped upon the road — I 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 183 

was recalled for a brief while to consciousness, 
and saw a star or two overhead, and the lace- 
like edge of the foliage against the sky. When 
I awoke for the third time (Wednesday, Sep- 
tember 25th), the world was flooded with a blue 
light, the mother of the dawn. I saw the leaves 
laboring in the wind and the ribbon of the road; 
and, on turning my head, there was Modestine 
tied to a beech, and standing half across the path 
in an attitude of inimitable patience. I closed my 
eyes again, and set to thinking over the experi- 
ence of the night. I was surprised to find how 
easy and pleasant it had been, even in this tem- 
pestuous weather. The stone which annoyed me 
would not have been there, had I not been forced 
to camp blindfold in the opaque night; and I had 
felt no other inconvenience, except when my feet 
encountered the lantern or the second volume of 
Peyrat's Pastors of the Desert among the mixed 
contents of my sleeping-bag; nay more, I had 
felt not a touch of cold, and awakened with un- 
usually lightsome and clear sensations. 

With that, I shook myself, got once more into 
my boots and gaiters, and, breaking up the rest 
of the bread for Modestine, strolled about to 
see in what part of the world I had awakened. 
Ulysses, left on Ithaca, and with a mind unsettled 
by the goddess, was not more pleasantly astray. 
I have been after an adventure all my life, a pure 
dispassionate adventure, such as befell early and 
heroic voyagers; and thus to be found by morn- 
ing in a random woodside nook in Gevaudan — 
not knowing north from south, as strange to 
my surroundings as the first man upon the earth, 
an inland castaway — was to find a fraction of 



184 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

my day-dreams realized. I was on the skirts of 
a little wood of birch, sprinkled with a few 
beeches; behind, it adjoined another wood of 
fir; and in front, it broke up and went down in 
open order into a shallow and meadowy dale. 
All around there were bare hill-tops, some near, 
some far away, as the perspective closed or 
opened, but none apparently much higher than 
the rest. The wind huddled the trees. The 
golden specks of autumn in the birches tossed 
shiveringly. Overhead the sky was full of 
strings and shreds of vapor, flying, vanishing, 
reappearing, and turning about an axis like 
tumblers, as the wind hounded them through 
heaven. It was wild weather and famishing 
cold. I ate some chocolate, swallowed a mouth- 
ful of brandy, and smoked a cigarette before the 
cold should have time to disable my fingers. And 
by the time I had got all this done, and had made 
my pack and bound it on the pack-saddle, the 
day was tiptoe on the threshold of the east. We 
had not gone many steps along the lane, before 
the sun, still invisible to me, sent a glow of gold 
over some cloud mountains that lay ranged along 
the eastern sky. 

The wind had us on the stern, and hurried us 
bitingly forward. I buttoned myself into my 
coat, and walked on in a pleasant frame of mind 
with all men, when suddenly, at a corner, there 
was Fouzilhic once more in front of me. Nor 
only that, but there was the old gentleman who 
had escorted me so far the night before, running 
out of his house at sight of me, with hands up- 
raised in horror. 



UPPER G& VAUDAN 185 

"My poor boy!" he cried, " what does this 
mean ? " 

I told him what had happened. He beat his 
old hands like clappers in a mill, to think how 
lightly he had let me go; but when he heard of 
the man of Fouzilhac, anger and depression 
seized upon his mind. 

" This time, at least/' said he, " there shall be 
no mistake." 

And he limped along, for he was very rheu- 
matic, for about half a mile, and until I was 
almost within sight of Cheylard, the destination 
I had hunted for so long. 



CHEYLARD AND LUC 

Candidly, it seemed little worthy of all this 
searching. A few broken ends of village, with 
no particular street, but a succession of open 
places heaped with logs and fagots; a couple of 
tilted crosses, a shrine to our Lady of all Graces 
on the summit of a little hill; and all this, upon 
a rattling highland river, in the corner of a 
naked valley. What went ye out for to see? 
thought I to myself. But the place had a life of 
its own. I found a board commemorating the 
liberalities of Cheylard for the past year, hung 
up, like a banner, in the diminutive and tottering 
church. In 1877, it appeared, the inhabitants 
subscribed forty-eight francs ten centimes for 
the " Work of the Propagation of the Faith." 
Some of this, I could not help hoping, would be 
applied to my native land. Cheylard scrapes to- 
gether half-pence for the darkened souls in Edin- 
burgh; while Balquidder and Dunrossness be- 
moan the ignorance of Rome. Thus, to the 
high entertainment of the angels, do we pelt each 
other with evangelists, like school-boys bickering 
in the snow. 

The inn was again singularly unpretentious. 
The whole furniture of a not ill-to-do family 
was in the kitchen: the beds, the cradle, the 
clothes, the plate-rack, the meal-chest, and the 
photograph of the parish priest. There were 

186 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 187 

five children, one of whom was set to its morn- 
ing prayers at the stair-foot soon after my arrival, 
and a sixth would erelong be forthcoming. I 
was kindly received by these good folk. They 
were much interested in my misadventure. The 
wood in which I had slept belonged to them ; the 
man of Fouzilhac they thought a monster of in- 
iquity, and counselled me warmly to summon him 
at law — " because I might have died." The 
good wife was horror-stricken to see me drink 
over a pint of uncreamed milk. 

" You will do yourself an evil," she said. 
" Permit me to boil it for you." 

After I had begun the morning on this delight- 
ful liquor, she having an infinity of things to 
arrange, I was permitted, nay requested, to make 
a bowl of chocolate for myself. My boots and 
gaiters were hung up to dry, and, seeing me 
trying to write my journal on my knee, the eldest 
daughter let down a hinged table in the chimney- 
corner for my convenience. Here I wrote, drank 
my chocolate, and finally ate an omelette before I 
left. The table was thick with dust ; for, as they 
explained, it was not used except in winter 
weather. I had a clear look up the vent, through 
brown agglomerations of soot and blue vapor, to 
the sky; and whenever a handful of twigs was 
thrown on to the fire, my legs were scorched 
by the blaze. 

The husband had begun life as a muleteer, and 
when I came to charge Modestine showed himself 
full of the prudence of his art. " You will have 
to change this package," said he ; " it ought to 
be in two parts, and then you might have double 
the weight." 



188 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

I explained that I wanted no more weight ; and 
for no donkey hitherto created would I cut my 
sleeping-bag in two. 

" It fatigues her, however/' said the innkeeper ; 
" it fatigues her greatly on the march. Look." 

Alas, there were her two forelegs no better than 
raw beef on the inside, and blood was running 
from under her tail. They told me when I left, 
and I was ready to believe it, that before a few 
days I should come to love Modestine like a dog. 
Three days had passed, we had shared some mis- 
adventures, and my heart was still as cold as a 
potato towards my beast of burthen. She was 
pretty enough to look at ; but then she had given 
proof of dead stupidity, redeemed indeed by 
patience, but aggravated by flashes of sorry and 
ill-judged light-heartedness. And I own this 
new discovery seemed another point against her. 
What the devil was the good of a she-ass if she 
could not carry a sleeping-bag and a few neces- 
saries? I saw the end of the fable rapidly ap- 
proaching, when I should have to carry Modes- 
tine. ^Esop was the man to know the world ! I 
assure you I set out with heavy thoughts upon 
my short day's march. 

It was not only heavy thoughts about Mo- 
destine that weighted me upon the way; it was 
a leaden business altogether. For first, the wind 
blew so rudely that I had to hold on the pack with 
one hand from Cheylard to Luc ; and second, my 
road lay through one of the most beggarly coun- 
tries in the world. It was like the worst of the 
Scotch Highlands, only worse; cold, naked, and 
ignoble, scant of wood, scant of heather, scant of 
life. A road and some fences broke the unvary- 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 189 

ing waste, and the line of the road was marked by- 
upright pillars, to serve in time of snow. 

Why any one should desire to visit either Luc 
or Cheylard is more than my much-inventing 
spirit can suppose. For my part, I travel not 
to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's 
sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the 
needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to 
come down off this feather-bed of civilization, 
and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn 
with cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life, 
and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a 
holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To 
hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out 
of the freezing north is no high industry, but it 
is one that serves to occupy and compose the 
mind. And when the present is so exacting, who 
can annoy himself about the future? 

I came out at length above the Allier. A more 
unsightly prospect at this season of the year it 
would be hard to fancy. Shelving hills rose 
round it on all sides, here dabbled with wood and 
fields, there rising to peaks alternately naked and 
hairy with pines. The 'color throughout was 
black or ashen, and came to a point in the ruins 
of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impudently 
from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a 
tall white statue of our Lady, which, I heard with 
interest, weighed fifty quintals, and was to be 
dedicated on the 6th of October. Though this, 
sorry landscape trickled the Allier and a tribu- 
tary of nearly equal size, which came down to 
join it through a broad nude valley in Vivarais. 
The weather had somewhat lightened, and the 
clouds massed in squadron; but the fierce wind 



190 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

still hunted them through heaven, and cast great 
ungainly splashes of shadow and sunlight over 
the scene. 

Luc itself was a straggling double file of houses 
wedged between hill and river. It had no beauty, 
nor was there any notable feature, save the old 
castle overhead with its fifty quintals of brand- 
new Madonna. But the inn was clean and large. 
The kitchen, with its two box-beds hung with 
clean check curtains, with its wide stone chimney, 
its chimney-shelf four yards long and garnished 
with lanterns and religious statuettes, its array 
of chests and pair of ticking clocks, was the very 
model of what a kitchen ought to be ; a melodrama 
kitchen, suitable for bandits or noblemen in dis- 
guise. Nor was the scene disgraced by the land- 
lady, a handsome, silent, dark old woman, clothed 
and hooded in black like a nun. Even the public 
bedroom had a character of its own, with the 
long deal tables and benches, where fifty might 
have dined, set out as for a harvest-home, and 
the three box-beds along the wall. In one of 
these, lying on straw and covered with a pair of 
table-napkins, did I do penance all night long in 
goose-flesh and chattering teeth, and sigh from 
time to time as I awakened for my sheepskin sack 
and the lee of some great wood. 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 

"I behold 
The House, the Brother- 
hood austere — 
And what am I, that I am 
here?" 

Matthew Arnold. 

FATHER APOLLINARIS 

Next morning (Thursday, 26th September) I 
took the road in a new order. The sack was no 
longer doubled, but hung at full length across the 
saddle, a green sausage six feet long with a tuft of 
blue wool hanging out of either end. It was 
more picturesque, it spared the donkey, and, as 
I began to see, it would insure stability, blow 
high, blow low. But it was not without a pang 
that I had so decided. For although I had pur- 
chased a new cord, and made all as fast as I was 
able, I was yet jealously uneasy lest the flaps 
should tumble out and scatter my effects along 
the line of march. 

My way lay up the bald valley of the river, 
along the march of Vivarais and Gevaudan. 
The hills of Gevaudan on the right were a 
little more naked, if anything, than those 
of Vivarais upon the left, and the former 
had a monopoly of a low dotty underwood 
that grew thickly in the gorges and died 
out in solitary burrs upon the shoulders and 

191 



192 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

the summits. Black bricks of fir-wood were 
plastered here and there upon both sides, and here 
and there were cultivated fields. A railway ran 
beside the river; the only bit of railway in 
Gevaudan, although there are many proposals 
afoot and surveys being made, and even, as they 
tell me, a station standing ready-built in Mende. 
A year or two hence and this may be another 
world. The desert is beleaguered. Now may 
some Languedocian Wordsworth turn the sonnet 
into patois: "Mountains and vales and floods 
heard ye that whistle?" 

At a place called La Bastide I was directed to 
leave the river, and follow a road that mounted on 
the left among the hills of Vivarais, the modern 
Ardeche ; for I was now come within a little way 
of my strange destination, the Trappist monastery 
of our Lady of the Snows. The sun came out as 
I left the shelter of a pinewood, and I beheld 
suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. 
High rocky hills, as blue as sapphire, closed the 
view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge, 
heathery, craggy, the sun glittering on veins of 
rock, the underwood clambering in the hollows, 
as rude as God made them at the first. There was 
not a sign of man's hand in all the prospect ; and 
indeed not a trace of his passage, save where 
generation after generation had walked in 
twisted foot-paths, in and out among the beeches, 
and up and down upon the channelled slopes. 
The mists, which had hitherto beset me, were 
now broken into clouds, and fled swiftly and 
shone brightly in the sun. I drew a long breath. 
It was grateful to come, after so long, upon a 
scene of some attraction for the human heart. 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 193 

I own I like definite form in what my eyes are 
to rest upon; and if landscapes were sold, like 
the sheets of characters of my boyhood, one 
penny plain and twopence colored, I should go 
the length of twopence every day of my life. 

But if things had grown better to the south, 
it was still desolate and inclement near at hand. 
A spidery cross on every hill-top marked the 
neighborhood of a religious house; and a quarter 
of a mile beyond, the outlook southward opening 
out and growing bolder with every step, a white 
statue of the Virgin at the corner of a young 
plantation directed the traveller to our Lady of 
the Snows. Here, then, I struck leftward, and 
pursued my way, driving my secular donkey be- 
fore me, and creaking in my secular boots and 
gaiters, towards the asylum of silence. 

I had not gone very far ere the wind brought 
to me the clanging of a bell, and somehow, I can 
scarce tell why, my heart sank within me at the 
sound. I have rarely approached anything with 
more unaffected terror than the monastery of our 
Lady of the Snows. This it is to have had a 
Protestant education. And suddenly, on turn- 
ing a corner, fear took hold on me from head to 
foot — slavish superstitious fear ; and though I 
did not stop in my advance, yet I went on slowly, 
like a man who should have passed a bourne un- 
noticed, and strayed into the country of the dead. 
For there upon the narrow new-made road, be- 
tween the stripling pines, was a mediaeval friar, 
fighting with a barrowful of turfs. Every Sun- 
day of my childhood I used to study the Hermits 
of Marco Sadeler — enchanting prints, full of 
wood and field and mediaeval landscapes, as 



194 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

large as a county, for the imagination to go a- 
travelling in; and here, sure enough, was one of 
Marco Sadeler's heroes. He was robed in white 
like any spectre, and the hood falling back, in the 
instancy of his contention with the barrow, dis- 
closed a pate as bald and yellow as a skull. He 
might have been buried any time these thousand 
years, and all the lively parts of him resolved into 
earth and broken up with the farmer's harrow. 

I was troubled besides in my mind as to eti- 
quette. Durst I address a person who was un- 
der a vow of silence? Clearly not. But draw- 
ing near, I doffed my cap to him. with a far-away 
superstitious reverence. He nodded back, and 
cheerfully addressed me. Was I going to the 
monastery? Who was I? An Englishman? 
Ah, an Irishman, then? 

"No," I said, "a Scotsman." 

A Scotsman ? Ah, he had never seen a Scots- 
man before. And he looked me all over, his 
good, honest, brawny countenance shining with 
interest, as a boy might look upon a lion or an 
alligator. From him I learned with disgust that 
I could not be received at our Lady of the Snows ; 
I might get a meal, perhaps, but that was all. 
And then, as our talk ran on, and it turned out 
that I was not a pedlar, but a literary man, who 
drew landscapes and was going to write a book, 
he changed his manner of thinking as to my re- 
ception (for I fear they respect persons even in 
a Trappist monastery), and told me I must be 
sure to ask for the Father Prior, and state my 
case to him in full. On second thoughts he de- 
termined to go down with me himself ; he thought 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 195 

he could manage for me better. Might he say 
that I was a geographer? 

No; I thought, in the interests of truth, he 
positively might not. 

"Very well, then" (with disappointment), 
" an author." 

It appeared he had been in a seminary with 
six young Irishmen, all priests long since, who 
had received newspapers and kept him informed 
of the state of ecclesiastical affairs in England. 
And he asked me eagerly after Dr. Pusey, for 
whose conversion the good man had continued 
ever since to pray night and morning. 

" I thought he was very near the truth," he 
said ; " and he will reach it yet ; there is so much 
virtue in prayer." 

He must be a stiff ungodly Protestant who can 
take anything but pleasure in this kind and hope- 
ful story. While he was thus near the subject, 
the good father asked me if I were a Christian; 
and when he found I was not, or not after his 
way, he glossed it over with great good-will. 

The road which we were following, and 
which this stalwart father had made with his 
own two hands within the space of a year, came 
to a corner, and showed us some white buildings 
a little further on beyond the wood. At the same 
time, the bell once more sounded abroad. We 
were hard upon the monastery. Father Apolli- 
naris (for that was my companion's name) 
stopped me. 

" I must not speak to you down there," he said. 
" Ask for the Brother Porter, and all will be well. 
But try to see me as you go out again through the 



196 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

wood, where I may speak to you. I am charmed 
to have made your acquaintance." 

And then suddenly raising his arms, flapping 
his fingers, and crying out twice, " I must not 
speak, I must not speak ! " he ran away in front 
of me, and disappeared into the monastery-door. 

I own this somewhat ghastly eccentricity went 
a good way to revive my terrors. But where one 
was so good and simple, why should not all be 
alike? I took heart of grace, and went forward 
to the gate as fast as Modestine, who seemed to 
have a disaffection for monasteries, would per- 
mit. It was the first door, in my acquaintance of 
her, which she had not shown an indecent haste 
to enter. I summoned the place in form, though 
with a quaking heart. Father Michael, the 
Father Hospitaller, and a pair of brown-robed 
brothers came to the gate and spoke with me 
awhile. I think my sack was the great attrac- 
tion; it had already beguiled the heart of poor 
Apollinaris, who had charged me on my life to 
show it to the Father Prior. But whether it was 
my address, or the sack, or the idea speedily pub- 
lished among that part of the brotherhood who 
attend on strangers that I was not a pedlar after 
all, I found no difficulty as to my reception. 
Modestine was led away by a layman to the 
stables, and I and my pack were received into our 
Lady of the Snows. 



THE MONKS 

Father Michael, a pleasant, fresh-faced, smil- 
ing man, perhaps of thirty-five, took me to the 
pantry, and gave me a glass of liqueur to stay me 
until dinner. We had some talk, or rather I 
should say he listened to my prattle indulgently 
enough, but with an abstracted air, like a spirit 
with a thing of clay. And truly when I re- 
member that I descanted principally on my appe- 
tite, and that it must have been by that time more 
than eighteen hours since Father Michael had so 
much as broken bread, I can well understand that 
he would find an earthly savor in my conversa- 
tion. But his manner, though superior, was ex- 
quisitely gracious; and I find I have a lurking 
curiosity as to Father Michael's past. 

The whet administered, I was left alone for a 
little in the monastery garden. This is no more 
than the main court, laid out in sandy paths and 
beds of party-colored dahlias, and with a foun- 
tain and a black statue of the Virgin in the centre. 
The buildings stand around it four-square, bleak, 
as yet unseasoned by the years and weather, and 
with no other features than a belfry and a pair 
of slated gables. Brothers in white, brothers in 
brown, passed silently along the sanded alleys; 
and when I first came out, three hooded monks 
were kneeling on the terrace at their prayers. A 
naked hill commands the monastery upon one 
side, and the wood commands it on the other. It 

197 



198 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

lies exposed to wind; the snow falls off and on 
from October to May, and sometimes lies six 
weeks on end; but if they stood in Eden, with a 
climate like heaven's, the buildings themselves 
would offer the same wintry and cheerless aspect ; 
and for my part, on this wild September day, be- 
fore I was called to dinner, I felt chilly in and 
out. 

When I had eaten well and heartily, Brother 
Ambrose, a hearty conversable Frenchman (for 
all those who wait on strangers have the liberty 
to speak), led me to a little room in that part of 
the building which is set apart for MM. les re- 
traitants. It was clean and whitewashed, and 
furnished with strict necessaries, a crucifix, a bust 
of the late Pope, the Imitation in French, a book 
of religious meditations, and the Life of Eliza<- 
beth Seton, evangelist, it would appear, of North 
America and of New England in particular. As 
far as my experience goes, there is a fair field for 
some more evangelization in these quarters; but 
think of Cotton Mather! I should like to give 
him a reading of this little work in heaven, where 
I hope he dwells; but perhaps he knows all that 
already, and much more; and perhaps he and 
Mrs. Seton are the dearest friends, and gladly 
unite their voices in the everlasting psalm. 
Over the table, to conclude the inventory of the 
room, hung a set of regulations for MM. les 
retraitants: what services they should attend, 
when they were to tell their beads or meditate, 
and when they were to rise and go to rest. At 
the foot was a notable N. B. : " Le temps libre 
est employe a Vexamen de conscience, a la con- 
fession, a faire de bonnes resolutions/' etc. To 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 199 

make good resolutions, indeed ! You might talk 
as fruitfully of making the hair grow on your 
head. 

I had scarce explored my niche when Brother 
Ambrose returned. An English boarder, it ap- 
peared, would like to speak with me. I professed 
my willingness, and the friar ushered in a fresh, 
young little Irishman of fifty, a deacon of the 
Church, arrayed in strict canonicals, and wearing 
on his head what, in default of knowledge, I can 
only call the ecclesiastical shako. He had lived 
seven years in retreat at a convent of nuns in Bel- 
gium, and now five at our Lady of the Snows ; he 
never saw an English newspaper ; he spoke French 
imperfectly, and had he spoken it like a native, 
there was not much chance of conversation where 
he dwelt. With this, he was a man eminently 
sociable, greedy of news, and simple-minded like 
a child. If I was pleased to have a guide about 
the monastery, he was no less delighted to see an 
English face and hear an English tongue. 

He showed me his own room, where he passed 
his time among breviaries, Hebrew bibles, and 
the Waverley novels. Thence he led me to the 
cloisters, into the chapter-house, through the 
vestry, where the brothers' gowns and broad 
straw hats were hanging up, each with his re- 
ligious name upon a board, — names full of leg- 
endary suavity and interest, such as Basil, Hil- 
arion, Raphael, or Pacifique; into the library, 
where were all the works of Veuillot and Chateau- 
briand, and the Odes et Ballades, if you please, 
and even Moliere, to say nothing of innumerable 
fathers and a great variety of local and general 
historians. Thence my good Irishman took me 



200 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

round the workshops, where brothers bake bread, 
and make cart-wheels, and take photographs; 
where one superintends a collection of curiosities, 
and another a gallery of rabbits. For in a Trap- 
pist monastery each monk has an occupation of 
his own choice, apart from his religious duties 
and the general labors of the house. Each must 
sing in the choir, if he has a voice and ear, and 
join in the haymaking if he has a hand to stir; 
but in his private hours, although he must be oc- 
cupied, he may be occupied on what he likes. 
Thus I was told that one brother was engaged 
with literature; while Father Apollinaris busies 
himself in making roads, and the Abbott em- 
ploys himself in binding books. It is not so long 
since this Abbot was consecrated, by the way; 
and on that occasion, by a special grace, his 
mother was permitted to enter the chapel and 
witness the ceremony of consecration. A proud 
day for her to have a son a mitred abbot; it 
makes you glad to think they let her in. 

In all these journey ings to and fro, many silent 
fathers and brethren fell in our way. Usually 
they paid no more regard to our passage than if 
we had been a cloud; but sometimes the good 
deacon had a permission to ask of them, and it 
was granted by a peculiar movement of the 
hands, almost like that of a dog's paws in swim- 
ming, or refused by the usual negative signs, and 
in either case with lowered eyelids and a certain 
air of contrition, as of a man who was steering 
very close to evil. 

The monks, by special grace of their Abbot, 
were still taking two meals a day; but it was al- 
ready time for their grand fast, which begins 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 201 

somewhere in September and lasts till Easter, and 
during which they eat but once in the twenty- 
four hours, and that at two in the afternoon, 
twelve hours after they have begun the toil and 
vigil of the day. Their meals are scanty, but 
even of these they eat sparingly; and though each 
is allowed a small carafe of wine, many refrain 
from this indulgence. Without doubt, the most 
of mankind grossly overeat themselves ; our meals 
serve not only for support, but as a hearty and 
natural diversion from the labor of life. Al- 
though excess may be hurtful, I should have 
thought this Trappist regimen defective. And I 
am astonished, as I look back, at the freshness of 
face and cheerfulness of manner of all whom I 
beheld. A happier nor a healthier company I 
should scarce suppose that I have ever seen. As 
a matter of fact, on this bleak upland, and with 
the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of 
an uncertain tenure, and death no infrequent 
visitor, at our Lady of the Snows. This, at 
least, was what was told me. But if they die 
easily, they must live healthily in the meantime, 
for they seemed all firm of flesh and high in 
color ; and the only morbid sign that I could ob- 
serve, an unusual brilliancy of eye, was one that 
served rather to increase the general impression 
of vivacity and strength. 

Those with whom I spoke were singularly 
sweet-tempered, with what I can only call a holy 
cheerfulness in air and conversation. There is a 
note, in the direction to visitors, telling them not 
to be offended at the curt speech of those who 
wait upon them, since it is proper to monks to 
speak little. The note might have been spared; 



202 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

to a man the hospitallers were all brimming with 
innocent talk, and, in my experience of the mon- 
astery, it was easier to begin than to break off a 
conversation. With the exception of Father 
Michael, who was a man of the world, they 
showed themselves full of kind and healthy in- 
terest in all sorts of subjects — in politics, in 
voyages, in my sleeping-sack — and not without 
a certain pleasure in the sound of their own 
voices. 

As for those who are restricted to silence, I can 
only wonder how they bear their solemn and 
cheerless isolation. And yet, apart from any 
view of mortification, I can see a certain policy, 
not only in the exclusion of women, but in this 
vow of silence. I have had some experience of 
lay phalansteries, of an artistic, not to say a 
bacchanalian, character; and seen more than one 
association easily formed, and yet more easily dis- 
persed. With a Cistercian rule, perhaps they 
might have lasted longer. In the neighborhood 
of women it is but a touch-and-go association 
that can be formed among defenceless men; the 
stronger electricity is sure to triumph ; the dreams 
of boyhood, the schemes of youth, are abandoned 
after an interview of ten minutes, and the arts 
and sciences, and professional male jollity, de- 
serted at once for two sweet eyes and a caressing 
accent. And next after this, the tongue is the 
great divider. 

I am almost ashamed to pursue this worldly 
criticism of a religious rule; but there is yet an- 
other point in which the Trappist order appeals 
to me as a model of wisdom. By two in the 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 203 

morning the clapper goes upon the bell, and so 
on, hour by hour, and sometimes quarter by quar- 
ter, till eight, the hour of rest; so infinitesimally 
is the day divided among different occupations. 
The man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries 
from his hutches to the chapel, the chapter-room, 
or the refectory, all day long: every hour he has 
an office to sing, a duty to perform; from two, 
when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he re- 
turns to receive the comfortable gift of sleep, he 
is upon his feet and occupied with manifold and 
changing business. I know many persons, worth 
several thousands in the year, who are not so for- 
tunate in the disposal of their lives. Into how 
many houses would not the note of the monas- 
tery-bell, dividing the day into manageable por- 
tions, bring peace of mind and healthful activity 
of body? We speak of hardships, but the true 
hardship is to be a dull fool, and permitted to 
mismanage life in our own dull and foolish man- 
ner. 

From this point of view, we may perhaps bet- 
ter understand the monk's existence. A long 
novitiate, and every proof of constancy of mind 
and strength of body is required before admission 
to the order ; but I could not find that many were 
discouraged. In the photographer's studio, 
which figures so strangely among the outbuild- 
ings, my eye was attracted by the portrait of a 
young fellow in the uniform of a private of 
foot. This was one of the novices, who came 
of the age for service, and marched and drilled 
and mounted guard for the proper time among 
the garrison of Algiers. Here was a man who 



204 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

had surely seen both sides of life before deciding; 
yet as soon as he was set free from service he 
returned to finish his novitiate. 

This austere rule entitles a man to heaven as 
by right. When the Trappist sickens, he quits 
not his habit; he lies in the bed of death as he 
has prayed and labored in his frugal and silent 
existence; and when the Liberator comes, at the 
very moment, even before they have carried him 
in his robe to lie his little last in the chapel among 
continual chantings, joy-bells break forth, as if 
for a marriage, from the slated belfry, and pro- 
claim throughout the neighborhood that another 
soul has gone to God. 

At night, under the conduct of my kind Irish- 
man, I took my place in the gallery to hear com- 
pline and Salve Regina, with which the Cistercians 
bring every day to a conclusion. There were 
none of those circumstances which strike the 
Protestant as childish or as tawdry in the public 
offices of Rome. A stern simplicity, heightened 
by the romance of the surroundings, spoke directly 
to the heart. I recall the whitewashed chapel, 
the hooded figures in the choir, the lights al- 
ternately occluded and revealed, the strong 
manly singing, the silence that ensued, the sight 
of cowled heads bowed in prayer, and then the 
clear trenchant beating of the bell, breaking in 
to show that the last office was over and the 
hour of sleep had come; and when I remember, 
I am not surprised that I made my escape into 
the court with somewhat whirling fancies, and 
stood like a man bewildered in the windy starry 
night. 

But I was weary; and when I had quieted my 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 205 

spirits with Elizabeth Seton's memoirs — a dull 
work — the cold and the raving of the wind 
among the pines — for my room was on that side 
of the monastery which adjoins the woods — 
disposed me readily to slumber. I was wakened 
at black midnight, as it seemed, though it was 
really two in the morning, by the first stroke upon 
the bell. All the brothers were then hurrying 
to the chapel; the dead in life, at this untimely 
hour, were already beginning the uncomforted 
labors of their day. The dead in life — there 
was a chill reflection. And the words of a 
French song came back into my memory, telling 
of the best of our mixed existence : 

" Que t'as de belles filles, 

Girofle ! 

Girofla ! 

Que t'as de belles filles, 

L' Amour les comptera ! " 

And I blessed God that I was free to wander, 
free to hope, and free to love. 



THE BOARDERS 

But there was another side to my residence at 
our Lady of the Snows. At this late season there 
were not many boarders; and yet I was not 
alone in the public part of the monastery. This 
itself is hard by the gate, with a small dining- 
room on the ground floor, and a whole corridor 
of cells similar to mine up-stairs. I have 
stupidly forgotten the board for a regular re- 
traitant; but it was somewhere between three and 
five francs a day, and I think most probably the 
first. Chance visitors like myself might give 
what they chose as a free-will offering, but 
nothing was demanded. I may mention that 
when I was going away, Father Michael refused 
twenty francs as excessive. I explained the rea- 
soning which led me to offer him so much; but 
even then, from a curious point of honor, he 
would not accept it with his own hand. " I 
have no right to refuse for the monastery/' he 
explained, " but I should prefer if you would 
give it to one of the brothers/' 

I had dined alone, because I arrived late ; but at 
supper I found two other guests. One was a 
country parish priest, who had walked over that 
morning from the seat of his cure near Mende to 
enjoy four days of solitude and prayer. He was 
a grenadier in person, with the hale color and 
circular wrinkles of a peasant; and as he com- 
plained much of how he had been impeded by 

206 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 207 

his skirts upon the march, I have a vivid fancy- 
portrait of him, striding along, upright, big- 
boned, with kilted cassock, through the bleak 
hills of Gevaudan. The other was a short, 
grizzling, thick-set man, from forty-five to fifty, 
dressed in tweed with a knitted spencer, and the 
red ribbon of a decoration in his buttonhole. 
This last was a hard person to classify. He was 
an old soldier, who had seen service and risen to 
the rank of commandant; and he retained some 
of the brisk decisive manners of the camp. On 
the other hand, as soon as his resignation was 
accepted, he had come to our Lady of the Snows 
as a boarder, and after a brief experience of its 
ways, had decided to remain as a novice. Al- 
ready the new life was beginning to modify his 
appearance; already he had acquired somewhat 
of the quiet and smiling air of the brethren; and 
he was as yet neither an officer nor a Trappist, 
but partook of the character of each. And cer- 
tainly here was a man in an interesting nick of 
life. Out of the noise of cannon and trumpets, 
he was in the act of passing into this still coun- 
try bordering on the grave, where men sleep 
nightly in their grave-clothes, and, like phan- 
toms, communicate by signs. 

At supper we talked politics. I make it my 
business, when I am in France, to preach politi- 
cal good-will and moderation, and to dwell on 
the example of Poland, much as some alarmists in 
England dwell on the example of Carthage. The 
priest and the commandant assured me of their 
sympathy with all I said, and made a heavy 
sighing over the bitterness of contemporary feel- 
ing. 



208 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

" Why, you cannot say anything to a man 
with which he does not absolutely agree/' said 
I, " but he flies up at you in a temper." 

They both declared that such a state of things 
was antichristian. 

While we were thus agreeing, what should 
my tongue stumble upon but a word in praise of 
Gambetta's moderation. The old soldier's coun- 
tenance was instantly suffused with blood; with 
the palms of his hands he beat the table like a 
naughty child. 

" Comment, monsieur? " he shouted. " Com^ 
ment? Gambetta moderate? Will you dare to 
justify these words?" 

But the priest had not forgotten the tenor of 
our talk. And suddenly, in the height of his 
fury, the old soldier found a warning look 
directed on his face ; the absurdity of his be- 
havior was brought home to him in a flash ; and 
the storm came to an abrupt end, without another 
word. 

It was only in the morning, over our coffee 
(Friday, September 27th), that this couple found 
out I was a heretic. I suppose I had misled them 
by some admiring expressions as to the monastic 
life around us; and it was only by a point-blank 
question that the truth came out. I had been 
tolerantly used, both by simple Father Apol- 
linaris and astute Father Michael; and the good 
Irish deacon, when he heard of my religious 
weakness, had only patted me upon the shoulder 
and said, " You must be a Catholic and come 
to heaven." But I was now among a different 
sect of orthodox. These two men were bitter 
and upright and narrow, like the worst of Scots- 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 209 

men, and indeed, upon my heart, I fancy they 
were worse. The priest snorted aloud like a 
battle-horse. 

" Et vous pretendez moitrir dans cette espece 
de croyance? " he demanded ; and there is no type 
used by mortal printers large enough to qualify 
his accent. 

I humbly indicated that I had no design of 
changing. 

But he could not away with such a monstrous 
attitude. " No, no/' he cried ; " you must change. 
You have come here, God has led you here, and 
you must embrace the opportunity." 

I made a slip in policy ; I appealed to the family 
affections, though I was speaking to a priest and 
a soldier, two classes of men circumstantially 
divorced from the kind and homely ties of life. 

"Your father and mother?" cried the priest. 
" Very well; you will convert them in their turn 
when you go home." 

I think I see my father's face! I would 
rather tackle the Gaetulian lion in his den than 
embark on such an enterprise against the family 
theologian. 

But now the hunt was up; priest and soldier 
were in full cry for my conversion; and the 
Work of the Propagation of the Faith, for which 
the people of Cheylard subscribed forty-eight 
francs ten centimes during 1877, was being 
gallantly pursued against myself. It was an odd 
but most effective proselytising. They never 
sought to convince me in argument, where I 
might have attempted some defence; but took it 
for granted that I was both ashamed and terri- 
fied at my position, and urged me solely on the 



210 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

point of time. Now, they said, when God had 
led me to our Lady of the Snows, now was the 
appointed hour. 

" Do not be withheld by false shame," ob- 
served the priest, for my encouragement. 

For one who feels very similarly to all sects of 
religion, and who has never been able, even for a 
moment, to weigh seriously the merit of this or 
that creed on the eternal side of things, however 
much he may see to praise or blame upon the 
secular and temporal side, the situation thus 
created was both unfair and painful. I com- 
mitted my second fault in tact, and tried to 
plead that it was all the same thing in the end, 
and we were all drawing near by different sides 
to the same kind and undiscriminating Friend 
and Father. That, as it seems to lay-spirits, 
would be the only gospel worthy of the name. 
But different men think differently; and this 
revolutionary aspiration brought down the priest 
with all the terrors of the law. He launched 
into harrowing details of hell. The damned, he 
said — on the authority of a little book which 
he had read not a week before, and which, to 
add conviction to conviction, he had fully in- 
tended to bring along with him in his pocket — 
were to occupy the same attitude through all 
eternity in the midst of dismal tortures. And as 
he thus expatiated, he grew in nobility of aspect 
with his enthusiasm. 

As a result the pair concluded that I should 
seek out the Prior, since the Abbot was from 
home, and lay my case immediately before him. 

" Cest mon conseil comme ancien militaire" 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 211 

observed the Commandant ; " et celid de mon- 
sieur comme pretre." 

"Oui" added the cure, sententiously nodding; 
" comme ancien militaire — et comme pretre." 

At this moment, whilst I was somewhat em- 
barrassed how to answer, in came one of the 
monks, a little brown fellow, as lively as a grig, 
and with an Italian accent, who threw himself 
at once into the contention, but in a milder and 
more persuasive vein, as befitted one of these 
pleasant brethren. Look at him, he said. The 
rule was very hard ; he would have dearly liked to 
stay in his own country, Italy — : it was well 
known how beautiful it was, the beautiful Italy; 
but then there were no Trappists in Italy; and 
he had a soul to save; and here he was. 

I am afraid I must be at bottom, what a cheer- 
ful Indian critic has dubbed me, " a faddling 
hedonist " ; for this description of the brother's 
motives gave me somewhat of a shock. I should 
have preferred to think he had chosen the life 
for its own sake, and not for ulterior purposes; 
and this shows how profoundly I was out of 
sympathy with these good Trappists, even when 
I was doing my best to sympathize. But to the 
cure the argument seemed decisive. 

" Hear that!" he cried. " And I have seen 
a marquis here, a marquis, a marquis " — he re- 
peated the holy word three times over — " and 
other persons high in society; and generals. 
And here, at your side, is this gentleman, who 
has been so many years in armies — decorated, 
an old warrior. And here he is, ready to dedi- 
cate himself to God." 



212 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

I was by this time so thoroughly embarrassed 
that I pleaded cold feet, and made my escape 
from the apartment. It was a furious windy 
morning, with a sky much cleared, and long and 
potent intervals of sunshine; and I wandered un- 
til dinner in the wild country towards the east, 
sorely staggered and beaten upon by the gale, 
but rewarded with some striking views. 

At dinner the Work of the Propagation of the 
Faith was recommenced, and on this occasion 
still more distastefully to pie. The priest asked 
me many questions as to the contemptible faith 
of my fathers, and received my replies with a 
kind of ecclesiastical titter. 

"Your sect," he said once; "for I think you 
will admit it would be doing it too much honor 
to call it a religion." 

" As you please, monsieur," said I. €t La pa- 
role est a vous" 

At length I grew annoyed beyond endurance; 
and although he was on his own ground, and, 
what is more to the purpose, an old man, and so 
holding a claim upon my toleration, I could not 
avoid a protest against this uncivil usage. He 
was sadly discountenanced. 

" I assure you," he said, " I have no inclina- 
tion to laugh in my heart. I have no other feel- 
ing but interest in your soul." 

And there ended my conversion. Honest 
man! He was no dangerous deceiver; but a 
country parson, full of zeal and faith. Long 
may he tread Gevaudan with his kilted skirts — 
a man strong to walk and strong to comfort his 
parishioners in death ! I dare say he would beat 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 213 

bravely through a snow-storm where his duty 
called him; and it is not always the most faithful 
believer who makes the cunningest apostle. 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 

(continued) 

" The bed was made, the 

room was fit, 
By punctual eve the stars 

were lit; 
The air was sweet, the 

water ran; 
No need was there for 

maid or wian, 
When we put up, my ass 

and I, 
At God's green caravan- 

serai." 

Old Play. 

ACROSS THE GOULET 

The wind fell during dinner, and the sky re- 
mained clear ; so it was under better auspices that 
I loaded Modestine before the monastery-gate. 
My Irish friend accompanied me so far on the 
way. As we came through the wood, there was 
Pere Apollinaire hauling his barrow; and he too 
quitted his labors to go with me for perhaps a 
hundred yards, holding my hand between both 
of his in front of him. I parted first from one 
and then from the other with unfeigned regret, 
but yet with the glee of the traveller who shakes 
off the dust of one stage before hurrying forth 
upon another. Then Modestine and I mounted 
the course of the Allier, which here led us back 

214 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 215 

into Gevaudan towards its sources in the forest 
of Mercoire. It was but an inconsiderable burn 
before we left its guidance. Thence, over a hill, 
our way lay through a naked plateau, until we 
reached Chasserades at sundown. 

The company in the inn-kitchen that night 
were all men'employed in survey for one of the 
projected railways. They were intelligent and 
conversable, and we decided the future of France 
over hot wine, until the state of the clock fright- 
ened us to rest. There were four beds in the 
little up-stairs room; and we slept six. But I 
had a bed to myself, and persuaded them to leave 
the window open. 

"He, bourgeois; il est cinq hemes I" was the 
cry that wakened me in the morning (Saturday, 
September 28th). The room was full of a trans- 
parent darkness, which dimly showed me the 
other three beds and the five different nightcaps 
on the pillows. But out of the window the dawn 
was growing ruddy in a long belt over the hill- 
tops, and day was about to flood the plateau. 
The hour was inspiriting; and there seemed a 
promise of calm weather, which was perfectly 
fulfilled. I was soon under way with Modestine. 
The road lay for awhile over the plateau, and 
then descended through a precipitous village into 
the valley of the Chassezac. This stream ran 
among green meadows, well hidden from the 
world by its steep banks ; the broom was in flower, 
and here and there was a hamlet sending up its 
smoke. 

At last the path crossed the Chassezac upon a 
bridge, and, forsaking this deep hollow, set itself 
to cross the mountain of La Goulet. It wound 



216 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

up through Lestampes by upland fields and woods 
of beech and birch, and with every corner brought 
me into an acquaintance with some new interest. 
Even in the gully of the Chassezac my ear had 
been struck by a noise like that of a great bass 
bell ringing at the distance of many miles; but 
this, as I continued to mount and draw nearer to 
it, seemed to change in character, and I found at 
length that it came from some one leading flocks 
afield to the note of a rural horn. The nar- 
row street of Lestampes stood full of sheep, 
from wall to wall — black sheep and white 
bleating like the birds in spring, and each 
one accompanying himself upon the sheep- 
bell round his neck. It made a pathetic con- 
cert, all in treble. A little higher, and I passed 
a pair of men in a tree with pruning-hooks, 
and one of them was singing the music of 
a bovirree. Still further, and when I was al- 
ready threading the birches, the crowing of pocks 
came cheerfully up to my ears, and along with 
that the voice of a flute discoursing a deliberate 
and plaintive air from one of the upland villages. 
I pictured to myself some grizzled, apple-cheeked, 
country schoolmaster fluting in his bit of a garden 
in the clear autumn sunshine. All these beauti- 
ful and interesting sounds filled my heart with an 
unwonted expectation ; and it appeared to me that, 
once past this range which I was mounting, I 
should descend into the garden of the world. 
Nor was I deceived, for I was now done with 
rains and winds and a bleak country. The first 
part of my journey ended here; and this was like 
an induction of sweet sounds into the other and 
more beautiful. 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 217 

There are other degress of feyness, as of pun- 
ishment besides the capital, and I was now led 
by my good spirits into an adventure which I re- 
late in the interest of future donkey-drivers. 
The road zigzagged so widely on the hillside that 
I chose a short cut by map and compass, and 
struck through the dwarf woods to catch the road 
again upon a higher level. It was my one se- 
rious conflict with Modestine. She would none 
of my short cut; she turned in my face, she 
backed, she reared; she, whom I had hitherto 
imagined to be dumb, actually brayed with a loud 
hoarse flourish, like a cock crowing for the dawn. 
I plied the goad with one hand; with the other, 
so steep was the ascent, I had to hold on the 
pack-saddle. Half-a-dozen times she was nearly 
over backwards on the top of me; half-a-dozen 
times, from sheer weariness of spirit, I was nearly 
giving it up, and leading her down again to fol- 
low the road. But I took the thing as a wager, 
and fought it through. I was surprised, as I 
went on my way again, by what appeared to be 
chill rain-drops falling on my hand, and more 
than once looked up in wonder at the cloudless 
sky. But it was only sweat which came dropping 
from my brow. 

Over the summit of the Goulet there was no 
marked road — only upright stones posted from 
space to space to guide the drovers. The turf 
underfoot was springy and well scented. I had 
no company but a lark or two, and met but one 
bullock-cart between Lestampes and Bleymard. 
In front of me I saw a shallow valley, and beyond 
that the range of the Lozere, sparsely wooded 
and well enough modelled in the flanks, but 



218 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

straight and dull in outline. There was scarce 
a sign of culture; only about Bleymard, the white 
highroad from Villefort to Mende traversed a 
range of meadows, set with spiry poplars, and 
sounding from side to side with the bells of 
flocks and herds. 



A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES 

From Bleymard after dinner, although it was 
already late, I set out to scale a portion of the 
Loizere. An ill-marked stony drove-road guided 
me forward; and I met nearly half-a-dozen bul- 
lock-carts descending from the woods, each 
laden with a whole pine-tree for the winter's 
firing. At the top of the woods, which do not 
climb very high upon this cold ridge, I struck 
leftward by a path among the pines, until I hit 
on a dell of green turf, where a streamlet made 
a little spout over some stones to serve me for a 
water-tap. " In a more sacred or sequestered 
bower — nor nymph nor faunus haunted." The 
trees were not old, but they grew thickly round 
the glade: there was no outlook, except north- 
eastward upon distant hill-tops, or straight up- 
ward to the sky; and the encampment felt secure 
and private like a room. By the time I had made 
my arrangements and fed Modestine, the day 
was already beginning to decline. I buckled my- 
self to the knees into my sack and made a hearty 
meal ; and as soon as the sun went down, I pulled 
my cap over my eyes and fell asleep. 

Night is a dead monotonous period under a 
roof ; but in the open world it passes lightly, with 
its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours 
are marked by changes in the face of Nature. 
What seems a kind of temporal death to people 

219 



220 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

choked between walls and curtains, is only a light 
and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield. 
All night long he can hear Nature breathing 
deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest she 
turns and smiles; and there is one stirring hour 
unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a 
wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping 
hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on 
their feet. It is then that the cock first crows, 
not this time to announce the dawn, but like a 
cheerful watchman speeding the course of night. 
Cattle awake on the meadows ; sheep break their 
fast on dewy hillsides, and change to a new lair 
among the ferns; and houseless men, who have 
lain down with the fowls, open their dim eyes and 
behold the beauty of the night. 

At what inaudible summons, at what gentle 
touch of Nature, are all these sleepers thus re- 
called in the same hour to life? Do the stars 
rain down an influence, or do we share some thrill 
of mother earth below our resting bodies? Even 
shepherds and old countryfolk, who are the 
deepest read in these arcana, have not a guess as 
to the means or purpose of this nightly resurrec- 
tion. Towards two in the morning they declare 
the thing takes place; and neither know nor in- 
quire further. And at least it is a pleasant in- 
cident. We are disturbed in our slumber only, 
like the luxurious Montaigne, " that we may the 
better and more sensibly relish it." We have a 
moment to look upon the stars, and there is a 
special pleasure for some minds in the reflection 
that we share the impulse with all outdoor crea- 
tures in our neighborhood, that we have escaped 
out of the Bastille of civilization and are become, 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 221 

for the time being, a mere kindly animal and a 
sheep of Nature's flock. 

When that hour came to me among the pines, 
I awakened thirsty. My tin was standing by 
me half full of water. I emptied it at a draught; 
and feeling broad awake after this internal cold 
aspersion, sat upright to make a cigarette. The 
stars were clear, colored, and jewel-like, but not 
frosty. A faint, silvery vapor stood for the 
Milky Way. All around me the black fir-points 
stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness 
of the pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking 
round and round at the length of her tether; I 
could hear her steadily munching at the sward; 
but there was not another sound, save the in- 
describable quiet talk of the runnel over the 
stones. I lay lazily smoking and studying the 
color of the sky, as we call the void of space, 
from where it showed a reddish gray behind the 
pines to where it showed a glossy blue-black be- 
tween the stars. As if to be more like a pedlar, 
I wear a silver ring. This I could see faintly 
shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette ; and 
at each whiff the inside of my hand was illu- 
minated ; and became for a second the highest light 
in the landscape. 

A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than 
a stream of air, passed down the glade from time 
to time; so that even in my great chamber the 
air was being renewed all night long. I thought 
with horror of the inn at Chasserades and the 
congregated nightcaps; with horror of the noc- 
turnal prowesses of clerks and students, of hot 
theatres and pass-keys and close rooms. I have 
not often enjoyed a more serene possession of my- 



222 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

self, nor felt more independent of material aids. 
The outer world, from which we cower into our 
houses, seemed after all a gentle habitable place; 
and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, 
was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where 
God keeps an open house. I thought I had re- 
discovered one of those truths which are re- 
vealed to savages and hid from political econo- 
mists: at the least, I had discovered a new 
pleasure for myself. And yet even while I was 
exulting in my solitude I became aware of a 
strange lack. I wished a companion to lie near 
me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but 
ever within touch. For there is a fellowship 
more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly 
understood, is solitude made perfect. And to 
live out of doors with the woman a man loves is 
of all lives the most complete and free. 

As I thus lay, between content and longing, a 
faint noise stole towards me through the pines. 
I thought, at first, it was the crowing of cocks 
or the barking of dogs at some very distant farm ; 
but steadily and gradually it took articulate shape 
in my ears, until I became aware that a passenger 
was going upon the highroad in the valley, and 
singing loudly as he went. There was more of 
good-will than grace in his performance; but he 
trolled with ample lungs; and the sound of his 
voice took hold upon the hillside and set the air 
shaking in the leafy glens. I have heard people 
passing by night in sleeping cities ; some of them 
sang; one, I remember, played loudly on the 
bagpipes. I have heard the rattle of a cart or 
carriage spring up suddenly after hours of still- 
ness, and pass, for some minutes, within the 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 223 

range of my hearing as I lay abed. There is a 
romance about all who are abroad in the black 
hours, and with something of a thrill we try to 
guess their business. But here the romance was 
double: first, this glad passenger, lit internally 
with wine, who sent up his voice in music through 
the night; and then I, on the other hand, buckled 
into my sack, and smoking alone in the pine- 
woods between four and five thousand feet to- 
wards the stars. 

When I awoke again (Sunday, 29th Septem- 
ber), many of the stars had disappeared ; only the 
stronger companions of the night still burned 
visibly overhead ; and away towards the east I 
saw a faint haze of light upon the horizon, such 
as had been the Milky Way when I was last 
awake. Day was at hand. I lit my lantern, 
and by its glowworm light put on my boots and 
gaiters ; then I broke up some bread for Modes- 
tine, filled my can at the water-tap, and lit my 
spirit-lamp to boil myself some chocolate. The 
blue darkness lay long in the glade where I had 
so sweetly slumbered; but soon there was a 
broad streak of orange melting into gold along 
the mountain-tops of Vivarais. A solemn glee 
possessed my mind at this gradual and lovely 
coming in of day. I heard the runnel with de- 
light; I looked round me for something beautiful 
and unexpected ; but the still black pine-trees, the 
hollow glade, the munching ass, remained un- 
changed in figure. Nothing had altered but the 
light, and that, indeed, shed over all a spirit of 
life and of breathing peace, and moved me to a 
strange exhilaration. 

I drank my water chocolate, which was hot if 



224 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

it was not rich, and strolled here and there, and 
up and down about the glade. While I was thus 
delaying, a gush of steady wind, as long as a 
heavy sigh, poured direct out of the quarter of 
the morning. It was cold, and set me sneezing. 
The trees near at hand tossed their black plumes 
in its passage; and I could see the thin distant 
spires of pine along the edge of the hill rock 
slightly to and fro against the golden east. Ten 
minutes after, the sunlight spread at a gallop 
along the hillside, scattering shadows and 
sparkles, and the day had come completely. 

I hastened to prepare my pack, and tackle the 
steep ascent that lay before me ; but I had some- 
thing on my mind. It was only a fancy; yet a 
fancy will sometimes be importunate. I had been 
most hospitably received and punctually served 
in my green caravanserai. The room was airy, 
the water excellent, and the dawn had called me 
to a moment. I say nothing of the tapestries or 
the inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which 
I commanded from the windows; but I felt I 
was in some one's debt for all this liberal enter- 
tainment. And so it pleased me, in a half -laugh- 
ing way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as 
I went along, until I had left enough for my 
night's lodging. I trust they did not fall to 
some rich and churlish drover. 



THE COUNTRY OF THE 
CAMISARDS 

" We travelled in the print of olden wars ; 

Yet all the land was green; 

And love we found, and peace, 

Where fire and war had been. 
They pass and smile, the children of the sword — - 

No more the sword they wield; 

And O, how deep the corn 

Along the battle-field ! " 

W. P. Bannatyne 

ACROSS THE LOZ^RE 

The track that I had followed in the evening 
soon died out, and I continued to follow over 
a bald turf ascent a row of stone pillars, such 
as had conducted me across the Goulet. It was 
already warm. I tied my jacket on the pack, 
and walked in my knitted waistcoat. Modestine 
herself was in high spirits, and broke of her 
own accord, for the first time in my experience, 
into a jolting trot that sent the oats s washing 
in the pocket of my coat. The view, back upon 
the northern Gevaudan, extended with every 
step ; scarce a tree, scarce a house, appeared upon 
the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and 
west, all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight 
of the morning. A multitude of little birds kept 
sweeping and twittering about my path ; they 
perched on the stone pillars, they pecked and 

225 



226 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

strutted on the turf, and I saw them circle in 
volleys in the blue air, and show, from time to 
time, translucent flickering wings between the 
sun and me. 

Almost from the first moment of my march, 
a faint large noise, like a distant surf, had filled 
my ears. Sometimes I was tempted to think it 
the voice of a neighboring waterfall, and some- 
times a subjective result of the utter stillness of 
the hill. But as I continued to advance, the 
noise increased and became like the hissing of 
an enormous tea-urn, and at the same time breaths 
of cool air began to reach me from the direction 
of the summit. At length I understood. It 
was blowing stiffly from the south upon the other 
slope of the Lozere, and every step that I took 
I was drawing nearer to the wind. 

Although it had been long desired, it was quite 
unexpectedly at last that my eyes rose above the 
summit. A step that seemed no way more de- 
cisive than many other steps that had preceded it 
— and, " like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes, 
he stared on the Pacific," I took possession, in 
my own name, of a new quarter of the world. 
For behold, instead of the gross turf rampart 
I had been mounting for so long, a view into 
the hazy air of heaven, and a land of intricate 
blue hills below my feet. 

The Lozere lies nearly east and west, cutting 
Gevaudan into two unequal parts ; its highest 
point, this Pic de Finiels, on which I was then 
standing, rises upwards of five thousand six hun- 
dred feet above the sea, and in clear weather com- 
mands a view over all lower Languedoc to the 
Mediterranean Sea. I have spoken with people 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 227 

who either pretended or believed that they had 
seen, from the Pic de Finiels, white ships sail- 
ing by Montpellier and Cette. Behind was the 
upland northern country through which my way 
had lain, peopled by a dull race, without wood, 
without much grandeur of hill-form, and famous 
in the past for little beside wolves. But in front 
of me, half veiled in sunny haze, lay a new Ge- 
vaudan, rich, picturesque, illustrious for stirring 
events. Speaking largely, I was in the Cevennes 
at Monastier, and during all my journey; but 
there is a strict and local sense in which only this 
confused and shaggy country at my feet has any 
title to the name, and in this sense the peasantry 
employ the word. These are the Cevennes with 
an emphasis : the Cevennes of the Cevennes. In 
that undecipherable labyrinth of hills, a war of 
bandits, a war of wild beasts, raged for two years 
between the Grand Monarch with all his troops 
and marshals on the one hand, and a few thou- 
sand Protestant mountaineers upon the other. 
A hundred and eighty years ago, the Camisards 
held a station even on the Lozere, where I stood ; 
they had an organization, arsenals, a military 
and religious hierarchy; their affairs were "the 
discourse of every coffee-house " in London ; 
England sent fleets in their support ; their leaders 
prophesied and murdered ; with colors and drums, 
and the singing of old French psalms, their bands 
sometimes affronted daylight, marched before 
walled cities, and dispersed the generals of the 
king; and sometimes at night, or in masquerade, 
possessed themselves of strong castles, and 
avenged treachery upon their allies and cruelty 
upon their foes. There, a hundred and eighty 



228 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

years ago, was the chivalrous Roland, " Count 
and Lord Roland, generalissimo of the Protes- 
tants in France/' grave, silent, imperious, pock- 
marked ex-dragoon, whom a lady followed in 
his wanderings out of love. There was Cavalier, 
a baker's apprentice with a genius for war, elected 
brigadier of Camisards at seventeen, to die at 
fifty-five the English governor of Jersey. There 
again was Castanet, a partisan leader in a volu- 
minous peruke and with a taste for controversial 
divinity. Strange generals, who moved apart to 
take counsel with the God of Hosts, and fled or 
offered battle, set sentinels or slept in an un- 
guarded camp, as the Spirit whispered to their 
hearts! And there, to follow these and other 
leaders, was the rank and file of prophets and 
disciples, bold, patient, indefatigable, hardy to 
run upon the mountains, cheering their rough life 
with psalms, eager to fight, eager to pray, listen- 
ing devoutly to the oracles of brain-sick children, 
and mystically putting a grain of wheat among 
the pewter balls with which they charged their 
muskets. 

I had travelled hitherto through a dull district, 
and in the track of nothing more notable than 
the child-eating Beast of Gevaudan, the Napo- 
leon Buonaparte of wolves. But now I was to 
go down into the scene of a romantic chapter 
— or, better, a romantic foot-note — in the his- 
tory of the world. What was left of all this 
by-gone dust and heroism ? I was told that Prot- 
estantism still survived in this head seat of 
Protestant resistance; so much the priest him- 
self had told me in the monastery parlor. But I 
had yet to learn if it were a bare survival, or a 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 229 

lively and generous tradition. Again, if in the 
northern Cevennes the people are narrow in re- 
ligious judgments, and more filled with zeal than 
charity, what was I to look for in this land of 
persecution and reprisal — in a land where the 
tyranny of the Church produced the Camisard 
rebellion, and the terror of the Camisards threw 
the Catholic peasantry into legalized revolt upon 
the other side, so that Camisard and Florentin 
skulked for each other's lives among the moun- 
tains ? 

Just on the brow of the hill, where I paused to 
look before me, the series of stone pillars came 
abruptly to an end; and only a little below, a 
sort of track appeared and began to go down a 
breakneck slope, turning like a corkscrew as it 
went. It led into a valley between falling hills, 
stubbly with rocks like a reaped field of corn, 
and floored further down with green meadows. 
I followed the track with precipitation ; the steep- 
ness of the slope, the continual agile turning of 
the line of descent, and the old unwearied hope 
of finding something new in a new country, all 
conspired to lend me wings. Yet a little lower 
and a stream began, collecting itself together 
out of many fountains, and soon making a glad 
noise among the hills. Sometimes it would 
cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with a pool, 
in which Modestine refreshed her feet. 

The whole descent is like a dream to me, so 
rapidly was it accomplished. I had scarcely left 
the summit ere the valley had closed round my 
path, and the sun beat upon me, walking in a 
stagnant lowland atmosphere. The track be- 
came a road, and went up and down in easy un- 



230 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

dulations. I passed cabin after cabin, but all 
seemed deserted ; and I saw not a human creature, 
nor heard any sound except that of the stream. 
I was, however, in a different country -from the 
day before. The stony skeleton of the world 
was here vigorously displayed to sun and air. 
The slopes were steep and changeful. Oak-trees 
clung ' along the hills, well grown, wealthy in 
leaf, and touched by the autumn with strong 
and luminous colors. Here and there another 
stream would fall in from the right or the left, 
down a gorge of snow-white and tumultuary 
boulders. The river in the bottom (for it was 
rapidly growing a river, collecting on all hands 
as it trotted on its way) here foamed awhile in 
desperate rapids, and there lay in pools of the 
most enchanting sea-green shot with watery 
browns. As far as I have gone, I have never 
seen a river of so changeful and delicate a hue ; 
crystal was not more clear, the meadows were 
not by half so green; and at every pool I saw 
I felt a thrill of longing to be out of these hot, 
dusty, and material garments, and bathe my 
naked body in the mountain air and water. All 
the time as I went on I never forgot it was the 
Sabbath; the stillness was a perpetual reminder; 
and I heard in spirit the church-bells clamoring 
all over Europe, and the psalms of a thousand 
churches. 

At length a human sound struck upon my ear 
— a cry strangely modulated between pathos and 
derision; and looking across the valley, I saw a 
little urchin sitting in a meadow, with his hands 
about his knees, and dwarfed to almost comical 
smallness by the distance. But the rogue had 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 231 

picked me out as I went down the road, from 
oak-wood on to oak-wood, driving Modestine; 
and he made me the compliments of the new 
country in this tremulous high-pitched saluta- 
tion. And as all noises are lovely and natural 
at a sufficient distance, this also, coming through 
so much clean hill air and crossing all the green 
valley, sounded pleasant to my ear, and seemed a 
thing rustic, like the oaks or the river. 

A little after, the stream that I was following 
fell into the Tarn, at Pont de Montvert of bloody 
memory. 



PONT DE MONTVERT 

One of the first things I encountered in Pont 
de Montvert was, if I remember rightly, the 
Protestant temple; but this was but the type of 
other novelties. A subtle atmosphere distin- 
guishes a town in England from a town in France, 
or even in Scotland. At Carlisle you can see 
you are in one country ; at Dumfries, thirty miles 
away, you are as sure that you are in the other. 
I should find it difficult to tell in what particulars 
Pont de Montvert differed from Monastier or 
Langogne, or even Bleymard; but the difference 
existed, and spoke eloquently to the eyes. The 
place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring river- 
bed, wore an indescribable air of the South. 

All was Sunday bustle in the streets and in the 
public-house, as all had been Sabbath peace 
among the mountains. There must have been 
near a score of us at dinner by eleven before noon ; 
and after I had eaten and drunken, and sat writing 
up my journal, I suppose as many more came drop- 
ping in one after another, or by twos and threes. 
In crossing the Lozere I had not only come among 
new natural features, but moved into the terri- 
tory of a different race. These people, as they 
hurriedly despatched their viands in an intricate 
sword-play of knives, questioned and answered 
me with a degree of intelligence which excelled 
all that I had met, except among the railway folk 
at Chasserades. They had open telling faces, 

232 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 233 

and were lively both in speech and manner. 
They not only entered thoroughly into the spirit 
of my little trip, but more than one declared, 
if he were rich enough, he would like to set forth 
on such another. 

Even physically there was a pleasant change. 
I had not seen a pretty woman since I left 
Monastier, and there but one. Now of the three 
who sat down with me to dinner, one was cer- 
tainly not beautiful — a poor timid thing of forty, 
quite troubled at this roaring table d'hote, whom 
I squired and helped to wine, and pledged and 
tried generally to encourage, with quite a con- 
trary effect; but the other two, both married, 
were both more handsome than the average of 
women. And Clarisse? What shall I say of 
Clarisse? She waited the table with a heavy 
placable nonchalance, like a performing cow ; her 
great grey eyes were steeped in amorous languor ; 
her features, although fleshy, were of an original 
and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; her 
nostril spoke of dainty pride; her cheek fell into 
strange and interesting lines. It was a face ca- 
pable of strong emotion, and, w T ith training, it 
offered the promise of delicate sentiment. It 
seemed pitiful to see so good a model left to 
country admirers and a country way of thought. 
Beauty should at least have touched society, then, 
in a moment, it throws off a weight that lay upon 
it, it becomes conscious of itself, it puts on an ele- 
gance, learns a gait and a carriage of the head, 
and, in a moment, patet dea. Before I left I 
assured Clarisse of my hearty admiration. She 
took it like milk, without embarrassment or 
wonder, merely looking at me steadily with her 



234 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

great eyes; and I own the result upon myself 
was some confusion. If Clarisse could read 
English, I should not dare to add that her figure 
was unworthy of her face. Hers was a case 
for stays; but that may perhaps grow better as 
she gets up in years. 

Pont de Montvert, or Greenhill Bridge, as we 
might say at home, is a place memorable in the 
story of the Camisards. It was here that the 
war broke out ; here that those southern Covenant- 
ers slew their Archbishop Sharpe. The perse- 
cution on the one hand, the febrile enthusiasm 
on the other, are almost equally difficult to under- 
stand in these quiet modern days, and with our 
easy modern beliefs and disbeliefs. The Protes- 
tants were one and all beside their right minds 
with zeal and sorrow. They were all prophets 
and prophetesses. Children at the breast would 
exhort their parents to good works. " A child 
of fifteen months at Quissac spoke from its 
mother's arms, agitated and sobbing, distinctly 
and with a loud voice." Marshal Villars has 
seen a town where all the women " seemed pos- 
sessed by the devil," and had trembling fits, and 
uttered prophecies publicly upon the streets. A 
prophetess of Vivarais was hanged at Montpel- 
lier because blood flowed from her eyes and nose, 
and she declared that she was weeping tears of 
blood for the misfortunes of the Protestants. 
And it was not only women and children. Stal- 
wart dangerous fellows, used to swing the sickle 
or to wield the forest axe, were likewise shaken 
with strange paroxysms, and spoke oracles with 
sobs and streaming tears. A persecution unsur- 
passed in violence had lasted nearly a score of 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 235 

years, and this was the result upon the perse- 
cuted; hanging, burning, breaking on the wheel, 
had been vain ; the dragoons had left their hoof- 
marks over all the country-side; there were men 
rowing in the galleys, and women pining in the 
prisons of the Church; and not a thought was 
changed in the heart of any upright Protes- 
tant. 

Now the head and forefront of the persecu- 
tion — after Lamoignon de Bavile — Frangois de 
Langlade du Chayla (pronounced Cheila), Arch- 
priest of the Cevennes and Inspector of Missions 
in the same country, had a house in which he 
sometimes dwelt in the town of Pont de Mont- 
vert. He was a conscientious person, who seems 
to have been intended by nature for a pirate, and 
now fifty-five, an age by which a man has learned 
all the moderation of which he is capable. A 
missionary in his youth in China, he there suf- 
fered martyrdom, was left for dead, and only 
succoured and brought back to life by the charity 
of a pariah. We must suppose the pariah de- 
void of second sight, and not purposely malicious 
in this act. Such an experience, it might be 
thought, would have cured a man of the desire to 
persecute ; but the human spirit is a thing strangely 
put together; and, having been a Christian mar- 
tyr, Du Chayla became a Christian persecutor. 
The Work of the Propagation of the Faith went 
roundly forward in his hands. His house in 
Pont de Montvert served him as a prison. There 
he plucked out the hairs of the beard, and closed 
the hands of his prisoners upon live coals, to con- 
vince them that they were deceived in their opin- 
ions. And yet had not he himself tried and 



236 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

proved the inefficacy of these carnal arguments 
among the Buddhists in China? 

Not only was life made intolerable in Langue- 
doc, but flight was rigidly forbidden. One Mas- 
sip, a muleteer, and well acquainted with the 
mountain-paths, had already guided several troops 
of fugitives in safety to Geneva; and on him, 
with another convoy, consisting mostly of women 
dressed as men, Du Chayla, in an evil hour for 
himself, laid his hands. The Sunday following, 
there was a conventicle of Protestants in the 
woods of Altefage upon Mont Rouges; where 
there stood up one Seguier — Spirit Seguier, as 
his companions called him — a wool-carder, tall, 
black- faced, and toothless, but a man full of 
prophecy. He declared, in the name of God, that 
the time for submission had gone by, and they 
must betake themselves to arms for the deliver- 
ance of their brethren and the destruction of 
the priests. 

The next night, 24th July, 1702, a sound dis- 
turbed the Inspector of Missions as he sat in his 
prison-house at Pont de Montvert; the voices of 
many men upraised in psalmody drew nearer 
and nearer through the town. It was ten at 
night; he had his court about him, priests, sol- 
diers, and servants, to the number of twelve 
or fifteen; and now dreading the insolence of a 
conventicle below his very windows, he ordered 
forth his soldiers to report. But the psalm-sing- 
ers were already at his door, fifty strong, led by 
the inspired Seguier, and breathing death. To 
their summons, the archpriest made answer like 
a stout old- persecutor, and bade his garrison 
fire upon the mob. One Camisard ( for, accord- 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 237 

ing to some, it was in this night's work that they 
came by the name) fell at this discharge; his 
comrades burst in the door with hatchets and a 
beam of wood, overran the lower story of the 
house, set free the prisoners, and finding one 
of them in the vine, a sort of Scavenger's Daugh- 
ter of the place and period, redoubled in fury 
against Du Chayla, and sought by repeated as- 
saults to carry the upper floors. But he, on his 
side, had given absolution to his men, and they 
bravely held the staircase. 

" Children of God," cried the prophet, " hold 
your hands. Let us burn the house, with the 
priest and the satellites of Baal." 

The fire caught readily. Out of an upper win- 
dow Du Chayla and his men lowered themselves 
into the garden by means of knotted sheets ; some 
escaped across the river under the bullets of the 
insurgents; but the archpriest himself fell, broke 
his thigh, and could only crawl into the hedge. 
What were his reflections as this second martyr- 
dom drew near? A poor, brave, besotted, hate- 
ful man, who had done his duty resolutely ac- 
cording to his light both in the Cevennes and 
China. He found at least one telling word to 
say in his defence; for when the roof fell in 
and the upbursting flames discovered his retreat, 
and they came and dragged him to the public 
place of the town, raging and calling him damned 
— " If I be damned," said he, " why should you 
also damn yourselves ? " 

Here was a good reason for the last ; but in the 
course of his inspectorship he had given many 
stronger which all told in a contrary direction ; 
and these he was now to hear. One by one, 



238 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

Seguier first, the Camisards drew near and 
stabbed him. " This," they said, " is for my 
father broken on the wheel. This for my brother 
in the galleys. That for my brother or my sister 
imprisoned in your cursed convents." Each gave 
his blow and his reason ; and then all kneeled and 
sang psalms around the body till the dawn. 
With the dawn, still singing, they defiled away 
towards Frugeres, further up the Tarn, to pur- 
sue the work of vengeance, leaving Du Chayla's 
prison-house in ruins, and his body pierced with 
two-and-fifty wounds upon the public place. 

'Tis a wild night's work, with its accompani- 
ment of psalms ; and it seems as if a psalm must 
always have a sound of threatening in that town 
upon the Tarn. But the story does not end, even 
so far as concerns Pont de Montvert, with the 
departure of the Camisards. The career of Se- 
guier was brief and bloody. Two more priests 
and a whole family at Ladeveze, from the father 
to the servants, fell by his hand or by his orders ; 
and yet he was but a day or two at large, and 
restrained all the time by the presence of the 
soldiery. Taken at length by a famous soldier 
of fortune, Captain Poul, he appeared unmoved 
before his judges. 

" Your name?" they asked. 

" Pierre Seguier." 

" Why are you called Spirit? " 

" Because the Spirit of the Lord is with me." 

" Your domicile ? " 

" Lately in the desert, and soon in heaven." 

"Have you no remorse for your crimes?" 

" I have committed none. My soul is like 
a garden full of shelter and of fountains." 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 239 

At Pont de Montvert, on the 12th of August, 
he had his right hand stricken from his body, and 
was burned alive. And his soul was like a 
garden ? So perhaps was the soul of Du Chayla, 
the Christian martyr. And perhaps if you could 
read in my soul, or I could read in yours, our 
own composure might seem little less surpris- 
ing. 

Du Chayla's house still stands, with a new 
roof, beside one of the bridges of the town; and 
if you are curious you may see the terrace gar- 
den into which he dropped. 



IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 

A new road leads from Pont de Montvert to 
Florae by the valley of the Tarn; a smooth sandy 
ledge, it runs about half-way between the summit 
of the cliffs and the river in the bottom of the 
valley; and I went in and out, as I followed it, 
from bays of shadow into promontories of after- 
noon sun. This was a pass like that of Killie- 
crankie; a deep turning gully in the hills, with 
the Tarn making a wonderful hoarse uproar far 
below, and craggy summits standing in the sun- 
shine high above. A thin fringe of ash-trees 
ran about the hill-tops, like ivy on a ruin; but 
on the lower slopes and far up every glen the 
Spanish chestnut-trees stood each four-square 
to heaven under its tented foliage. Some were 
planted each on its own terrace, no larger than 
a bed ; some, trusting in their roots, found strength 
to grow and prosper and be straight and large 
upon the rapid slopes of the valley; others, where 
there was a margin to the river, stood marshalled 
in a line and mighty like cedars of Lebanon. 
Yet even where they grew most thickly they 
were not to be thought of as a wood, but as a 
herd of stalwart individuals; and the dome of 
each tree stood forth separate and large, and as 
it were a little hill, from among the domes of 
its companions. They gave forth a faint sweet 
perfume which pervaded the air of the afternoon; 
autumn had put tints of gold and tarnish in the 

240 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 241 

green ; and the sun so shone through and kindled 
the broad foliage, that each chestnut was relieved 
against another, not in shadow, but in light. A 
humbler sketcher here laid down his pencil in 
despair. 

I wish I could convey a notion of the growth 
of these noble trees; of how they strike out 
boughs like the oak, and trail sprays of droop- 
ing foliage like the willow; of how they stand 
on upright fluted columns like the pillars of a 
church ; or like the olive, from the most shattered 
bole can put out smooth and youthful shoots, 
and begin a new life upon the ruins of the old. 
Thus they partake of the nature of many dif- 
ferent trees; and even their prickly top-knots, 
seen near at hand against the sky, have a certain 
palm-like air that impresses the imagination. 
But their individuality, although compounded of 
so many elements, is but the richer and the more 
original. And to look down upon a level filled 
with these knolls of foliage, or to see a clan 
of old unconquerable chestnuts cluster " like 
herded elephants " upon a spur of a mountain, 
is to rise to higher thoughts of the powers that 
are in Nature. 

Between Modestine's laggard humor and the 
beauty of the scene, we made little progress all 
that afternoon; and at last finding the sun, al- 
though still far from setting, was already begin- 
ning to desert the narrow valley of the Tarn, 
I began to cast about for a place to camp in. 
This was not easy to find ; the terraces were too 
narrow, and the ground, where it was unter- 
raced, was usually too steep for a man to lie 
upon. I should have slipped all night, and 



242 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

awakened towards morning with my feet or my 
head in the river. 

After perhaps a mile, I saw, some sixty feet 
above the road, a little plateau large enough to 
hold my sack, and securely parapeted by the trunk 
of an aged and enormous chestnut. Thither, 
with infinite trouble, I goaded and kicked the re- 
luctant Modestine, and there I hastened to un- 
load her. There was only room for myself upon 
the plateau, and I had to go nearly as high again be- 
fore I found so much as standing room for the ass. 
It was on a heap of rolling stones, on an arti- 
ficial terrace, certainly not five feet square in all. 
Here I tied her to a chestnut, and having given 
her corn and bread and made a pile of chestnut- 
leaves, of which I found her greedy, I descended 
once more to my own encampment. 

The position was unpleasantly exposed. One 
or two carts went by upon the road ;. and as long 
as daylight lasted I concealed myself, for all the 
world like a hunted Camisard, behind my forti- 
fication of vast chestnut trunk; for I was pas- 
sionately afraid of discovery and the visit of 
jocular persons in the night. Moreover, I saw 
that I must be early awake; for these chestnut- 
gardens had been the scene of industry no further 
gone than on the day before. The slope was 
strewn with lopped branches, and here and there 
a great package of leaves was propped against 
a trunk; for even the leaves are serviceable, and 
the peasants use them in winter by way of fodder 
for their animals. I picked a meal in fear and 
trembling, half lying down to hide myself from 
the road ; and I dare say I was as much concerned 
as if I had been a scout from Joani's band above 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 243 

upon the Lozere or from Salomon's across the 
Tarn in the old times of psalm-singing and blood. 
Or, indeed, perhaps more ; for the Camisards had 
a remarkable confidence in God ; and a tale comes 
back into my memory of how the Count of Ge- 
vaudan, riding with a party of dragoons and a 
notary at his saddle-bow to enforce the oath of 
fidelity in all the country hamlets, entered a val- 
ley in the woods, and found Cavalier and his men 
at dinner, gaily seated on the grass, and their 
hats crowned with box-tree garlands, while fif- 
teen women washed their linen in the stream. 
Such was a field festival in 1703; at that date 
Antony Watteau would be painting similar sub- 
jects. 

This was a very different camp from that of 
the night before in the cool and silent pine-woods. 
It was warm and even stifling in the valley. The 
shrill song of frogs, like the tremolo note of a 
whistle with a pea in it, rang up from the river- 
side before the sun was down. In the growing 
dusk, faint rustlings began to run to and fro 
among the fallen leaves; from time to time a 
faint chirping or cheeping noise would fall upon 
my ear ; and from time to time I thought I could 
see the movement of something swift and in- 
distinct between the chestnuts. A profusion of 
large ants swarmed upon the ground; bats 
whisked by, and mosquitoes droned overhead. 
The long boughs with their bunches of leaves 
hung against the sky like garlands; and those 
immediately above and around me had somewhat 
the air of a trellis which should have been wrecked 
and half overthrown in a gale of wind. 

Sleep for a long time fled my eyelids; and 



244 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

just as I was beginning to feel quiet stealing over 
my limbs, and settling densely on my mind, a 
noise at my head startled me broad awake again, 
and, I will frankly confess it, brought my heart 
into my mouth. It was such a noise as a person 
would make scratching loudly with a finger-nail, 
it came from under the .cnapsack which served 
me for a pillow, and it was thrice repeated before 
I had time to sit up and turn about. Nothing 
was to be seen, nothing more was to be heard, but 
a few of these mysterious rustlings far and near, 
and the ceaseless accompaniment of the river 
and the frogs. I learned next day that the chest- 
nut gardens are infested by rats ; rustling, chirp- 
ing, and scraping were probably all due to these; 
but the puzzle, for the moment, was insoluble, 
and I had to compose myself for sleep, as best 
I could, in wondering uncertainty about my neigh- 
bors. 

I was wakened in the grey of the morning 
(Monday, 30th September) by the sound of foot- 
steps not far off upon the stones, and opening 
my eyes, I beheld a peasant going by among the 
chestnuts by a foot-path that I had not hitherto 
observed. He turned his head neither to the 
right nor to the left, and disappeared in a few 
strides among the foliage. Here was an escape ! 
But it was plainly more than time to be moving. 
The peasantry were abroad; scarce less terrible 
to me in my nondescript position than the sol- 
diers of Captain Poul to an undaunted Camisard. 
I fed Modestine with what haste I could ; but as 
I was returning to my sack, I saw a man and 
a boy come down the hillside in a direction cross- 
ing mine. They unintelligibly hailed me, and I 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 245 

replied with inarticulate but cheerful sounds, and 
hurried forward to get into my gaiters. 

The pair, who seemed to be father and son, 
came slowly up to the plateau, and stood close 
beside me for some time in silence. The bed was 
open, an.d I saw with regret my revolver lying 
patently m disclosed on the blue wool. At last, 
after they had looked me all over, and silence 
had grown laughably embarrassing, the man de-- 
manded in what seemed unfriendly tones : 

"You have slept here?" 

" Yes/' said I, " as you see." 

"Why?" he asked. 

" My faith," I answered lightly, " I was tired." 

He next inquired where I was going and what 
I had had for dinner ; and then, without the least 
transition, " Cest bien" he added. " Come 
along." And he and his son, without another 
word, turned off to the next chestnut-tree but 
one, which they set to pruning. The thing had 
passed off more simply than I hoped. He was 
a grave, respectable man; and his unfriendly 
voice did not imply that he thought he was speak- 
ing to a criminal, but merely to an inferior. 

I was soon on the road, nibbling a cake of 
chocolate and seriously occupied with a case of 
conscience. Was I to pay for my night's lodg- 
ing? I had slept ill, the bed was full of fleas in 
the shape of ants, there was no water in the room, 
the very dawn had neglected to call me in the 
morning. I might have missed a train, had there 
been any in the neighborhood to catch. Clearly, 
I was dissatisfied with my entertainment; and I 
decided I should not pay unless I met a beg- 
gar. 



246 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

The valley looked even lovelier by morning; 
and soon the road descended to the level of the 
river. Here, in a place where many straight and 
prosperous chestnuts stood together, making an 
aisle upon a swarded terrace, I made my morning 
toilette in the water of the Tarn. It was marvel- 
lously clear, thrillingly cool; the soap-suds dis- 
appeared as if by magic in the swift current, and 
the white boulders gave one a model for clean- 
liness. To wash in one of God's rivers in the 
open air seems to me a sort of cheerful solemnity 
or semi-pagan act of worship. To dabble among 
dishes in a bedroom may perhaps make clean 
the body; but the imagination takes no share in 
such a cleansing. I went on with a light and 
peaceful heart, and sang psalms to the spiritual 
ear as I advanced. 

Suddenly up came an old woman, who point- 
blank demanded alms. 

" Good ! " thought I ; " here comes the waiter 
with the bill." 

And I paid for my night's lodging on the spot. 
Take it how you please, but this was the first and 
the last beggar that I met with during all my 
tour. 

A step or two farther I was overtaken by an 
old man in a brown nightcap, clear-eyed, weather- 
beaten, with a faint, excited smile. A little girl 
followed him, driving two sheep and a goat ; but 
she kept in our wake, while the old man walked 
beside me and talked about the morning and 
the valley. It was not much past six; and for 
healthy people who have slept enough, that is an 
hour of expansion and of open and trustful 
talk. 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 247 

" Connaissez-vous le Seigneur? " he said at 
length. 

I asked him what Seigneur he meant ; but he 
only repeated the question with more emphasis 
and a look in his eyes denoting hope and interest. 

"Ah!" said I, pointing upwards, "I under- 
stand you now. Yes, I know Him; He is the 
best of acquaintances." 

The old man said he was delighted. " Hold," 
he added, striking his bosom ; " it makes me 
happy here." There were a few who knew the 
Lord in these valleys, he went on to tell me ; not 
many, but a few. " Many are called," he quoted, 
" and few chosen." 

" My father," said I, " it is not easy to say who 
know the Lord; and it is none of our business. 
Protestants and Catholics, and even those who 
worship stones, may know Him and be known 
by Him; for He has made all." 

I did not know I was so good a preacher. 

The old man assured me he thought as I did, 
and repeated his expressions of pleasure at meet- 
ing me. " We are so few," he said. " They 
call us Moravians here ; but down in the depart- 
ment of Gard, where there are also a good num- 
ber, they are called Derbists, after an English 
pastor." 

I began to understand that I was figuring, in 
questionable taste, as a member of some sect to 
me unknown; but I was more pleased with the 
pleasure of my companion than embarrassed by 
my own equivocal position. Indeed I can see no 
dishonesty in not avowing a difference; and es- 
pecially in these high matters, where we all have a 
sufficient assurance that, whoever may be in the 



248 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

wrong, we ourselves are not completely in the 
right. The truth is much talked about; but this 
old man in a brown nightcap showed himself 
so simple, sweet, and friendly that I am not un- 
willing to profess myself his convert. He was, 
as a matter of fact, a Plymouth Brother. Of 
what that involves in the way of doctrine I have 
no idea nor the time to inform myself; but I 
know right well that we are all embarked upon 
a troublesome world, the children of one Father, 
striving in many essential points to do and to 
become the same. And although it was some- 
what in a mistake that he shook hands with me 
so often and showed himself so ready to receive 
my words, that was a mistake of the truth-find- 
ing sort. For charity begins blindfold; and 
only through a series of similar misapprehensions 
rises at length into a settled principle of love and 
patience, and a firm belief in all our fellow-men. 
If I deceived this good old man, in the like man- 
ner I would willingly go on to deceive others. 
And if ever at length, out of our separate and 
sad ways, we should all come together into one 
common house, I have a hope, to which I cling 
dearly, that my mountain Plymouth Brother will 
hasten to shake hands with me again. 

Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful by 
the way, he and I came down upon a hamlet 
by the Tarn. It was but a humble place, called 
La Vernede, with less than a dozen houses, and 
a Protestant chapel on a knoll. Here he dwelt ; 
and here, at the inn, I ordered my breakfast. 
The inn was kept by an agreeable young man, a 
stone-breaker on the road, and his sister, a pretty 
and engaging girl. The village school-master 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 249 

had dropped in to speak with the stranger. And 
these were all Protestants — a fact which pleased 
me more than I should have expected ; and, what 
pleased me still more, they seemed all upright 
and simple people. The Plymouth Brother hung 
round me with a sort of yearning interest, and 
returned at least thrice to make sure I was en- 
joying my meal. His behavior touched me 
deeply at the time, and even now moves me in 
recollection. He feared to intrude, but he would 
not willingly forego one moment of my society; 
and he seemed never weary of shaking me by the 
hand. 

When all the rest had drifted off to their day's 
work, I sat for near half an hour with the young 
mistress of the house, who talked pleasantly over 
her seam of the chestnut harvest, and the beauties 
of the Tarn, and old family affections, broken 
up when young folk go from home, yet still sub- 
sisting. Hers, I am sure, was a sweet nature, 
with a country plainness and much delicacy un- 
derneath ; and he who takes her to his heart will 
doubtless be a fortunate young man. 

The valley below La Vernede pleased me more 
and more as I went forward. Now the hills ap- 
proached from either hand, naked and crumbling, 
and walled in the river between cliffs; and now 
the valley widened and became green. The road 
led me past the old castle of Miral on a steep ; 
past a battlemented monastery, long since broken 
up and turned into a church and parsonage ; and 
past a cluster of black roofs, the village of Co- 
cures, sitting among vineyards and meadows and 
orchards thick with red apples, and where, along 
the highway, they were knocking down walnuts 



250 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

from the roadside trees, and gathering them in 
sacks and baskets. The hills, however much the 
vale might open, were still tall and bare, with 
cliffy battlements and here and there a pointed 
summit; and the Tarn still rattled through the 
stones with a mountain noise. I had been led, 
by bagmen of a picturesque turn of mind, to ex- 
pect a horrific country after the heart of Byron; 
but to my Scotch eyes it seemed smiling and plen- 
tiful, as the weather still gave an impression of 
high summer to my Scotch body; although the 
chestnuts were already picked out by the autumn, 
and the poplars, that there began to mingle with 
them, had turned into pale gold against the ap- 
proach of winter. 

There was something in this landscape, smiling 
although wild, that explained to me the spirit 
of the Southern Covenanters. Those who took to 
the hills for conscience' sake in Scotland had 
all gloomy and bedevilled thoughts ; for once that 
they received God's comfort they would be twice 
engaged with Satan ; but the Camisards had only 
bright and supporting visions. They dealt much 
more in blood, both given and taken; yet I find 
no obsession of the Evil One in their records. 
With a light conscience, they pursued their life 
in these rough times and circumstances. The 
soul of Seguier, let us not forget, was like a 
garden. They knew they were on God's side, 
with a knowledge that has no parallel among the 
Scots; for the Scots, although they might be 
certain of the cause, could never rest confident 
of the person. 

" We flew," says one old Camisard, " when 
we heard the sound of psalm-singing, we flew 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 251 

as if with wings. We felt within us an anima- 
ting ardor, a transporting desire. The feeling 
cannot be expressed in words. It is a thing that 
must have been experienced to be understood. 
However weary we might be, we thought no more 
of our weariness and grew light, so soon as the 
psalms fell upon our ears." 

The valley of the Tarn and the people whom 
I met at La Vernede not only explain to me this 
passage, but the twenty years of suffering which 
those, who were so stiff and so bloody when once 
they betook themselves to war, endured with the 
meekness of children and the constancy of saints 
and peasants. 



FLORAC 

On a branch of the Tarn stands Florae, the 
seat of a subprefecture, with an old castle, an 
alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and 
a live fountain welling from the hill. It is not- 
able, besides, for handsome women, and as one 
of the two capitals, Alais being the other, of the 
country of the Camisards. 

The landlord of the inn took me, after I had 
eaten, to an adjoining cafe, where I, or rather 
my journey, became the topic of the afternoon. 
Every one had some suggestion for my guidance ; 
and the subprefectorial map was fetched from 
the subprefecture itself, and much thumbed among 
coffee-cups and glasses of liqueur. Most of these 
kind advisers were Protestant, though I observed 
that Protestant and Catholic intermingled in a 
very easy manner; and it surprised me to see 
what a lively memory still subsisted of the re- 
ligious war. Among the hills of the south-west, 
by Mauchline, Cumnock, or Carsphairn, in iso- 
lated farms or in the manse, serious Presbyterian 
people still recall the days of the great perse- 
cution, and the graves of local martyrs are still 
piously regarded. But in towns and among the 
so-called better classes, I fear that these old do- 
ings have become an idle tale. If you met a 
mixed company in the King's Arms at Wigtown, 
it is not likely that the talk would run on Cov- 
enanters. Nay, at Muirkirk of Glenluce, I found 

252 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 253 

the beadle's wife had not so much as heard of 
Prophet Peden. But these Cevenols were proud 
of their ancestors in quite another sense ; the war 
was their chosen topic; its exploits were their 
own patent of nobility; and where a man or a 
race has had but one adventure, and that heroic, 
we must expect and pardon some prolixity of 
reference. They told me the country was still 
full of legends hitherto uncollected; I heard from 
them about Cavalier's descendants — not direct 
descendants, be it understood, but only cousins 
or nephews — who were still prosperous people 
in the scene of the boy-general's exploits; and 
one farmer had seen the bones of old combatants 
dug up into the air of an afternoon in the nine- 
teenth century, in a field where the ancestors had 
fought, and the great-grandchildren were peace- 
ably ditching. 

Later in the day one of the Protestant pastors 
was so good as to visit me : a young man, intel- 
ligent and polite, with whom I passed an hour 
or two in talk. Florae, he told me, is part Prot- 
estant, part Catholic; and the difference in re- 
ligions is usually doubled by the difference in 
politics. You may judge of my surprise, coming 
as I did from such a babbling purgatorial Poland 
of a place as Monastier, when I learned that the 
population lived together on ver)' quiet terms; 
and there was even an exchange of hospitalities 
between households thus doubly separated. Black 
Camisard and White Camisard, militiamen and 
Miquelet and dragoon, Protestant prophet and 
Catholic cadet of the White Cross, they had all 
been sabring and shooting, burning, pillaging and 
murdering, their hearts hot with indignant pas- 



254 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

sion ; and here, after a hundred and seventy years, 
Protestant is still Protestant, Catholic still Catho- 
lic, in mutual toleration and mild amity of life. 
But the race of man, like that indomitable nature 
whence it sprang, has medicating virtues of its 
own; the years and seasons bring various har- 
vests; the sun returns after the rain; and man- 
kind outlives secular animosities, as a single man 
awakens from the passions of a day. We judge 
our ancestors from a more divine position; and 
the dust being a little laid with several centuries, 
we can see both sides adorned with human virtues 
and fighting with a show of right. 

I had never thought it easy to be just, and find 
it daily even harder than I thought. I own I 
met these Protestants with delight and a sense 
of coming home. I was accustomed to speak 
their language, in another and deeper sense of 
the word than that which distinguishes between 
French and English; for the true babel is a di- 
vergence upon morals. And hence I could hold 
more "free communication with the Protestants 
and judge the more justly, than the Catholics. 
Father Apollinaris may pair off with my moun- 
tain Plymouth Brother as two guileless and de- 
vout old man; yet I ask myself if I had as ready 
a feeling for the virtues of the Trappist; or had 
I been a Catholic, if I should have felt so warmly 
to the dissenter of La Vernede. With the first 
I was on terms of mere forbearance; but with 
the other, although only on a misunderstanding 
and by keeping on selected points, it was still 
possible to hold converse and exchange some hon- 
est thoughts. In this world of imperfection we 
gladly welcome even partial intimacies. If we 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 255 

find but one to whom we can speak out of our 
heart freely, with whom we can walk in love and 
simplicity without dissimulation, we have no 
ground of quarrel with the world or God. 



IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE 

On Tuesday, ist October, we left Florae late 
in the afternoon, a tired donkey and tired donkey- 
driver. A little way up the Tarnon, a covered 
bridge of wood introduced us into the valley of 
the Mimente. Steep rocky red mountains over- 
hung the stream; great oaks and chestnuts grew 
upon the slopes or in stony terraces; here and 
there was a red field of millet or a few apple- 
trees studded with red apples ; and the road passed 
hard by two black hamlets, one with an old castle 
atop to please the heart of the tourist. 

It was difficult here again to find a spot fit 
for my encampment. Even under the oaks and 
chestnuts the ground had not only a very rapid 
slope, but was heaped with loose stones ; and where 
there was no timber the hills descended to the 
stream in a red precipice tufted with heather. 
The sun had left the highest peak in front of me, 
and the valley was full of the lowing sound of 
herdsmen's horns as they recalled the flocks into 
the stable, when I spied a bight of meadow some 
way below the roadway in an angle of the river. 
Thither I descended, and, tying Modestine pro- 
visionally to a tree, proceeded to investigate the 
neighborhood. A grey pearly evening shadow 
filled the glen; objects at a little distance grew in- 
distinct and melted bafflingly into each other ; and 
the darkness was rising steadily like an exhala- 
tion. I approached a great oak which grew in 

956 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 257 

the meadow, hard by the river's brink; when to 
my disgust the voices of children fell upon my 
ear, and I beheld a house round the angle on the 
other bank. I had half a mind to pack and be 
gone again, but the growing darkness moved me 
to remain. I had only to make no noise until 
the night was fairly come, and trust to the dawn 
to call me early in the morning. But it was hard 
to be annoyed by neighbors in such a great hotel, 
A hollow underneath the oak was my bed. 
Before I had fed Molestine and arranged my 
sack, three stars were already brightly shining, 
and the others were beginning dimly to appear. 
I slipped dow r n to the river, which looked very 
black among its rocks, to fill my can; and dined 
with a good appetite in the dark, for I scrupled 
to light a lantern while so near a house. The 
moon, which I had seen, a pallid crescent, all aft- 
ernoon, faintly illuminated the summit of the 
hills, but not a ray fell into the bottom of the 
glen where I was lying. The oak rose before me 
like a pillar of darkness ; and overhead the heart- 
some stars were set in the face of the night. No 
one knows the stars w T ho has not slept, as the 
French happily put it, a la belle etoile. He may 
know all their names and distances and magni- 
tudes, and yet be ignorant of what alone concerns 
mankind, their serene and gladsome influence on 
the mind. The greater part of poetry is about the 
stars; and very justly, for they are themselves 
the most classical of poets. These same faraway 
worlds, sprinkled like tapers or shaken together 
like a diamond dust upon the sky, had looked not 
otherwise to Roland or Cavalier, when, in the 
words of the latter, they had " no other tent 



258 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

but the sky, and no other bed than my mother 
earth." 

All night a strong wind blew up the valley, and 
the acorns fell pattering over me from the oak. 
Yet, on this first night of October, the air was 
as mild as May, and I slept with the fur thrown 
back. 

I was much disturbed by the barking of a dog, 
an animal that I fear more than any wolf. A 
dog is vastly braver, and is besides supported by 
the sense of duty. If you kill a wolf, you meet 
with encouragement and praise; but if you kill a 
dog, the sacred rights of property and the do- 
mestic affections come clamoring round you for 
redress. At the end of a fagging day, the sharp, 
cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a keen an- 
noyance; and to a tramp like myself, he repre- 
sents the sedentary and respectable world in its 
most hostile form. There is something of the 
clergyman or the lawyer about this engaging ani- 
mal; and if he were not amenable to stones, the 
boldest man would shrink from travelling afoot. 
I respect dogs much in the domestic circle ; but on 
the highway or sleeping afield, I both detest and 
fear them. 

I was wakened next morning (Wednesday, 
October 2d) by the same dog — for I knew his 
bark — making a charge down the bank, and 
then, seeing me sit up, retreating again with great 
alacrity. The stars were not yet quite extin- 
guished. The heaven was of that enchanting 
mild grey-blue of the early morn. A still clear 
light began to fall, and the trees on the hillside 
were outlined sharply against the sky. The 
wind had veered more to the north, and no longer 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 259 

reached me in the glen; but as I was going on 
with my preparations, it drove a white cloud 
very swiftly over the hill-top; and looking up, 
I was surprised to see the cloud dyed with gold. 
In these high regions of the air, the sun was 
already shining as at noon. If only the clouds 
travelled high enough, we should see the same 
thing all night long. For it is always daylight 
in the fields of space. 

As I began to go up the valley, a draught of 
wind came down it out of the seat of the sun- 
rise, although the clouds continued to run over- 
head in an almost contrary direction. A few 
steps farther, and I saw a whole hill-side gilded 
with the sun; and still a little beyond, between 
two peaks, a centre of dazzling brilliancy ap- 
peared floating in the sky, and I was once more 
face to face with the big bonfire that occupies 
the kernel of our system. 

I met but one human being that forenoon, a 
dark military-looking wayfarer, who carried a 
game-bag on a baldric; but he made a remark 
that seems worthy of record. For when I asked 
him if he were Protestant or Catholic — 

" O," said he, " I make no shame of my re- 
ligion. I am a Catholic." 

He made no shame of it! The phrase is a 
piece of natural statistics; for it is the language 
of one in a minority. I thought with a smile of 
Bavile and his dragoons, and how you may ride 
rough-shod over a religion for a century, and 
leave it only the more lively for the friction. 
Ireland is still Catholic; the Cevennes still Prot- 
estant. It is not a basketful of law-papers, nor 
the hoofs and pistol-butts of a regiment of horse, 



260 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

that can change one tittle of a ploughman's 
thoughts. Outdoor rustic people have not many 
ideas, but such as they have are hardy plants 
and thrive flourishingly in persecution. One 
who has grown a long while in the sweat of 
laborious noons, and under the stars at night, 
a frequenter of hills and forests an old honest 
countryman, has, in the end, a sense of com- 
munion with the powers of the universe, and 
amicable relations towards his God. Like my 
mountain Plymouth Brother, he knows the Lord. 
His religion does not repose upon a choice of 
logic; it is the poetry of the man's experience, 
the philosophy of the history of his life. God, 
like a great power, like a great shining sun, has 
appeared to this simple fellow in the course of 
years, and become the ground and essence of his 
least reflections ; and you may change creeds and 
dogmas by authority, or proclaim a new religion 
with the sound of trumpets, if you will ; but here 
is a man who has his own thoughts, and will 
stubbornly adhere to them in good and evil. He 
is a Catholic, a Protestant, or a Plymouth Brother, 
in the same indefeasible sense that a man is not 
a woman, or a woman not a man. For he 
could not vary from his faith, unless he could 
eradicate all memory of the past, and, in a strict 
and not a conventional meaning, change his 
mind. 



THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 

I was now drawing near to Cassagnas, a clus- 
ter of black roofs upon the hillside, in this wild 
valley, among chestnut gardens, and looked upon 
in the clear air by many rocky peaks. The road 
along the Mimente is yet new, nor have the 
mountaineers recovered their surprise when the 
first cart arrived at Cassagnas. But although 
it lay thus apart from the current of men's busi- 
ness, this hamlet has already made a figure in the 
history of France. Hard by, in caverns of 
the mountains, was one of the five arsenals of 
the Camisards; where they laid up clothes and 
corn and arms against necessity, forged bay- 
onets and sabres, and made themselves gun- 
powder with willow charcoal and saltpetre boiled 
in kettles. To the same caves, amid this multi- 
farious industry, the sick and wounded were 
brought up to heal; and there they were visited 
by the two surgeons, Chabrier and Tavan, and 
secretly nursed by women of the neighborhool. 

Of the five legions into which the Camisards 
were divided, it was the oldest and the most 
obscure that had its magazines by Cassagnas. 
This was the band of Spirit Seguier; men who 
had joined their voices with his in the 68th 
Psalm as they marched down by night on the 
archpriest of the Cevennes. Seguier, promoted 
to heaven, was succeeded by Salomon Couderc, 
whom Cavalier treats in his memoirs as chap- 

261 



262 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

Iain-general to the whole army of the Camisards. 
He was a prophet; a great reader of the heart, 
who admitted people to the sacrament or refused 
them by " intentively viewing every man " be- 
tween the eyes; and had the most of the Scrip- 
tures off by rote. And this was surely happy; 
since in a surprise in August, 1703, he lost his 
mule, his portfolios, and his Bible. It is only 
strange that they were not surprised more often 
and more effectually; for this legion of Cas- 
sagnas was truly patriarchal in its theory of war, 
and camped without sentries, leaving that duty 
to the angels of the God for whom they fought. 
This is a token, not only of their faith, but of 
the trackless country where they harbored. M. 
de Caladon, taking a stroll one fine day, walked 
without warning into their midst, as he might 
have walked into " a flock of sheep in a plain," 
and found some asleep and some awake and 
psalm-singing. A traitor had need of no recom- 
mendation to insinuate himself among their 
ranks, beyond " his faculty of singing psalms " ; 
and even the prophet Salomon " took him into 
a particular friendship." Thus, among their in- 
tricate hills, the rustic troop subsisted; and his- 
tory can attribute few exploits to them but 
sacraments and ecstasies. 

People of this tough and simple stock will not, 
as I have just been saying, prove variable in 
religion; nor will they get nearer to apostasy 
than a mere external conformity like that of 
Naaman in the house of Rimmon. When Louis 
XVI, in the words of the edict, " convinced by 
the uselessness of a century of persecutions, and 
rather from necessity than sympathy," granted 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 263 

at last a royal grace of toleration, Cassagnas 
was still Protestant; and to a man, it is so to 
this day. There is, indeed, one family that is 
not Protestant, but neither is it Catholic. It 
is that of a Catholic cure in revolt, who has taken 
to his bosom a schoolmistress. And his con- 
duct, it's worth noting, is disapproved by the 
Protestant villagers. 

" It is a bad idea for a man," said one, " to 
go back from his engagements." 

The villagers whom I saw seemed intelligent 
after a countrified fashion, and were all plain 
and dignified in manner. As a Protestant my- 
self, I was well looked upon, and my acquaintance 
with history gained me farther respect. For 
we had something not unlike a religious contro- 
versy at table, a gendarme and a merchant with 
whom I dined being both strangers to the place 
and Catholics. The young men of the house 
stood round and supported me; and the whole 
discussion was tolerantly conducted, and sur- 
prised a man brought up among the infinitesimal 
and contentious differences of Scotland. The 
merchant, indeed, grew a little warm, and was 
far less pleased than some others with my his- 
torical acquirements. But the gendarme was 
mighty easy over it all. 

" It's a bad idea for a man to change," said 
he; and the remark was generally applauded. 

That was not the opinion of the priest and 
soldier at Our Lady of the Snows. But this 
is a different race; and perhaps the same great- 
heartedness that upheld them to resist, now en- 
ables them to differ in a kind spirit. For 
courage respects courage; but where a faith has 



264 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

been trodden out, we may look for a mean and 
narrow population. The true work, of Bruce 
and Wallace was the union of the nations; not 
that they should stand apart awhile longer, skir- 
mishing upon their borders; but that, when the 
time came, they might unite with self-re- 
spect. The merchant was much interested in 
my journey, and thought it dangerous to sleep 
afield. 

" There are the wolves," said he ; " and then it 
is known you are an Englishman. The English 
have always long purses, and it might very well 
enter into some one's head to deal you an ill 
blow some night." 

I told him I was not much afraid of such acci- 
dents; and at any rate judged it unwise to dwell 
upon alarms or consider small perils in the ar- 
rangement of life. Life itself, I submitted, was 
a far too risky business as a whole to make 
each additional particular of danger worth re- 
gard. " Something," said I, " might burst in 
your inside any day of the week, and there would 
be an end of you, if you were locked into your 
room with three turns of the key." 

" Cependant" said he, " coucher dehors!" 

" God," said I, " is everywhere." 

"Cependant, coucher dehors!" he repeated, 
and his voice was eloquent of terror. 

He was the only person, in all my voyage, 
who saw anything hardy in so simple a pro- 
ceeding; although many considered it superflu- 
ous. Only one, on the other hand, professed 
much delight in the idea; and that was my 
Plymouth Brother, who cried out, when I told 
him I sometimes preferred sleeping under the 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 265 

stars to a close and noisy alehouse, " Now I 
see that you know the Lord! " 

The merchant asked me for one of my cards 
as I was leaving, for he said I should be some- 
thing to talk of in the future, and desired me 
to make a note of his request and reason; a 
desire with which I have thus complied. 

A little after two I struck across the Mimente, 
and took a rugged path southward up a hillside 
covered with loose stones and tufts of heather. 
At the top, as is the habit of the country, the 
path disappeared; and I left my she-ass munch- 
ing heather, and went forward alone to seek a 
road. 

I was now on the separation of two vast water- 
sheds ; behind me all the streams were bound for 
the Garonne and the Western Ocean; before me 
was the basin of the Rhone. Hence, as from 
the Lozere, you can see in clear weather the 
shining of the Gulf of Lyons; and perhaps from 
here the soldiers of Salomon may have watched 
for the topsails of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and 
the long-promised aid from England. You may 
take this ridge as lying in the heart of the country 
of the Camisards; four of the five legions 
camped all round it and almost within view — 
Salomon and Joani to the north, Castanet and 
Roland to the south; and when Julien had fin- 
ished his famous work, the devastation of the 
High Cevennes, which lasted all through Oc- 
tober and November, 1703, and during which 
four hundred and sixty villages and hamlets 
were, with fire and pickaxe, utterly subverted, a 
man standing on this eminence would have looked 
forth upon a silent, smokeless, and dispeopled 



266 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

land. Time and man's activity have now re- 
paired these ruins ; Cassagnas is once more roofed 
and sending up domestic smoke ; and in the chest- 
nut gardens, in low and leafy corners, many 
a prosperous farmer returns, when the day's 
work is done, to his children and bright hearth. 
And still it was perhaps the wildest view of all 
my journey. Peak upon peak, chain upon 
chain of hills ran surging southward, channelled 
and sculptured by the winter streams, feathered 
from head to foot with chestnuts, and here and 
there breaking out into a coronal of cliffs. The 
sun, which was still far from setting, sent a 
drift of misty gold across the hill-tops, but the 
valleys were already plunged in a profound and 
quiet shadow. 

A very old shepherd, hobbling on a pair of 
sticks, and wearing a black cap of liberty, as if 
in honor of his nearness to the grave, directed 
me to the road for St. Germain de Calberte. 
There was something solemn in the isolation of 
this infirm and ancient creature. Where he 
dwelt, how he got upon this high ridge, or how 
he proposed to get down again, were more than 
I could fancy. Not far off upon my right was 
the famous Plan de Font Morte, where Poul 
and his Armenian sabre slashed down the Cam- 
isards of Seguier. This, methought, might be 
some Rip van Winkle of the war, who had lost 
his comrades, fleeing before Poul, and wandered 
ever since upon the mountains. It might be 
news to him that Cavalier had surrendered, or 
Roland had fallen fighting with his back against 
an olive. And while I was thus working on my 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 267 

fancy, I heard him hailing in broken tones, and 
saw him waving me to come back with one of 
his two sticks. I had already got some way 
past him; but, leaving Modestine once more, 
retraced my steps. 

Alas, it was a very commonplace affair. The 
old gentleman had forgot to ask the pedlar what 
he sold, and wished to remedy this neglect. 

I told him sternly, " Nothing." 

"Nothing?" cried he. 

I repeated " Nothing," and made off. 

It's odd to think of, but perhaps I thus be- 
came as inexplicable to the old man as he had 
been to me. 

The road lay under chestnuts, and though I 
saw a hamlet or two below me in the vale, and 
many lone houses of the chestnut farmers, it 
was a very solitary march all afternoon; and 
the evening began early underneath the trees. 
But I heard the voice of a woman singing some 
sad, old, endless ballad not far off. It seemed 
to be about love and a bel amoureux, her hand- 
some sweetheart ; and I wished I could have taken 
up the strain and answered her, as I went on 
upon my invisible woodland way, weaving, like 
Pippa in the poem, my own thoughts with hers. 
What could I have told her? Little enough; 
and yet all the heart requires. How the world 
gives and takes away, and brings sweethearts 
near, only to separate them again into distant 
and strange lands ; but to love is the great amu- 
let which makes the world a garden; and " hope, 
which comes to all," outwears the accidents of 
life, and reaches with tremulous hand beyond 



268 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

the grave and death. Easy to say: yea, but 
also, by God's mercy, both easy and grateful to 
believe ! 

We struck at last into a wide white highroad, 
carpeted with noiseless dust. The night had 
come; the moon had been shining for a long 
while upon the opposite mountain ; when on turn- 
ing a corner my donkey and I issued ourselves 
into her light. I had emptied out my brandy at 
Florae, for I could bear the stuff no longer, and 
replaced it with some generous and scented Vol- 
nay; and now I drank to the moon's sacred 
majesty upon the road. It was but a couple 
of mouthfuls; yet I became thenceforth uncon- 
scious of my limbs, and my blood flowed with 
luxury. Even Modestine was inspired by this 
purified nocturnal sunshine, and bestirred her 
little hoofs to a livelier measure. The road 
wound and descended swiftly among masses of 
chestnuts. Hot dust rose from our feet and 
flowed away. Our two shadows — mine de- 
formed with the knapsack, hers comically be- 
stridden by the pack — now lay before us clearly 
outlined in the road, and now, as we turned a 
corner, went off into the ghostly distance, and 
sailed along the mountainlike clouds. From 
time to time a warm wind rustled down the val- 
ley, and set all the chestnuts dangling their 
bunches of foliage and fruit; the ear was filled 
with whispering music, and the shadows danced 
in tune. And next moment the breeze had gone 
by, and in all the valley nothing moved except 
our travelling feet. On the opposite slope, the 
monstrous ribs and gullies of the mountain were 
faintly designed in the moonshine ; and high over- 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 269 

head, in some lone house, there burned one 
lighted window, one square spark of red in the 
huge field of sad nocturnal coloring. 

At a certain point, as I went downward, turn- 
ing many acute angles, the moon disappeared 
behind the hill; and I pursued my way in great 
darkness, until another turning shot me without 
preparation into St. Germain de Calberte. The 
place was asleep and silent, and buried in opaque 
night. Only from a single open door, some 
lamplight escaped upon the road to show me I 
was come among men's habitations. The two 
last gossips of the evening, still talking by a 
garden wall, directed me to the inn. The land- 
lady was getting her chicks to bed; the fire was 
already out, and had, not without grumbling, 
to be rekindled ; half an hour later, and I must 
have gone supperless to roost. 



THE LAST DAY 

When I awoke (Thursday, 3d October) and 
hearing a great flourishing of cocks and chuck- 
ling of contented hens, betook me to the window 
of the clean and comfortable room where I had 
slept the night, I looked forth on a sunshiny 
morning in a deep vale of chestnut gardens. It 
was still early, and the cock-crows, and the slant- 
ing lights, and the long shadows encouraged me 
to be out and look round me. 

St. Germain de Calberte is a great parish nine 
leagues round about. At the period of the wars, 
and immediately before the devastation, it was 
inhabited by two hundred and seventy-five fami- 
lies, of which only nine were Catholic; and it 
took the cure seventeen September days to go 
from house to house on horseback for a cen- 
sus. But the place itself, although capital of 
a canton, is scarce larger than a hamlet. It lies 
terraced across a steep slope in the midst of 
mighty chestnuts. The Protestant chapel stands 
below upon a shoulder ; in the midst of the town 
is the quaint old Catholic church. 

It was here that poor Du Chayla, the Christian 
martyr, kept his library and held a court of 
missionaries; here he had built his tomb, think- 
ing to lie among a grateful population whom he 
had redeemed from error ; and hither on the mor- 
row of his death they brought the body, pierced 
with two-and-fifty wounds, to be interred. Clad 

270 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 271 

in his priestly robes, he was laid out in state in 
the church. The cure, taking his text from 
Second Samuel, twentieth chapter and twelfth 
verse, "And Amasa wallowed in his blood in 
the highway," preached a rousing sermon, and 
exhorted his brethren to die each at his post, 
like their unhappy and illustrious superior. In 
the midst of this eloquence there came a breeze 
that Spirit Seguier was near at hand ; and behold ! 
all the assembly took to their horses' heels, some 
east, some west, and the cure himself as far as 
Alais. 

Strange was the position of this little Catholic 
metropolis, a thimbleful of Rome, in such a 
wild and contrary neighborhood. On the one 
hand, the legion of Salomon overlooked it from 
Cassagnas; on the other, it was cut off from 
assistance by the legion of Roland at Mialet. 
The cure, Louvrelenil, although he took a panic 
at the archpriest's funeral, and so hurriedly de- 
camped to Alais, stood well by his isolated pul- 
pit, and thence uttered fulminations against the 
crimes of the Protjestants. Salomon beseiged 
the village for an hour and a half, but was beat 
back. The militiamen, on guard before the 
cure's door, could be heard, in the black hours, 
singing Protestant psalms and holding friendly 
talk with the insurgents. And in the morning, 
although not a shot had been fired, there would 
not be a round of powder in their flasks. Where 
was it gone? All handed over to the Camisards 
for a consideration. Untrusty guardians for an 
isolated priest! 

That these continual stirs were once busy in 
St. Germaine de Calberte, the imagination with 



272 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

difficulty receives; all is now so quiet, the pulse 
of human life now beats so low and still in this 
hamlet of the mountains. Boys followed me 
a great way off, like a timid sort of lion-hunters; 
and people turned round to have a second look, 
or came out of their houses, as I went by. My 
passage was the first event, you would have 
fancied, since the Camisards. There was noth- 
ing rude or forward in this observation; it was 
but a pleased and wondering scrutiny, like that 
of oxen or the human infant; yet it wearied my 
spirits, and soon drove me from the street 

I took refuge on the terraces, which are here 
greenly carpeted with sward, and tried to imi- 
tate with a pencil the inimitable attitudes of 
the chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of 
leaves. Ever and again a little wind went by, 
and the nuts dropped all around me, with a 
light and dull sound, upon the sward. The 
noise was as of a thin fall of great hailstones; 
but there went with it a cheerful human senti- 
ment of an approaching harvest and farmers re- 
joicing in their gains. Looking up, I could see 
the brown nut peering through the husk, which 
was already gaping; and between the stems the 
eye embraced an amphitheatre of hill, sunlit and 
green with leaves. 

I have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. 
I moved in an atmosphere of pleasure, and felt 
light and quiet and content. But perhaps it was 
not the place alone that so disposed my spirit. 
Perhaps some one was thinking of me in another 
country; or perhaps some thought of my own 
had come and gone unnoticed, and yet done me 
good. For some thoughts, which sure would be 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 273 

the most beautiful, vanish before we can rightly 
scan their features; as though a god, travelling 
by our green highways, should but ope the door, 
give one smiling look into the house, and go 
again for ever. Was it Apollo, or Mercury, or 
Love with folded wings? Who shall say? But 
we go the lighter about our business, and feel 
peace and pleasure in our hearts. 

I dined with a pair of Catholics. They agreed 
in the condemnation of a young man, a Catholic, 
who had married a Protestant girl and gone over 
to the religion of his wife. A Protestant born 
they could understand and respect; indeed, they 
seemed to be of the mind of an old Catholic 
woman, who told me that same day there was 
no difference between the two sects, save that 
" wrong was more wrong for the Catholic," who 
had more light and guidance; but this of a man's 
desertion filled them with contempt. 

" It is a bad idea for a man to change/' said 
one. 

It may have been accidental, but you see how 
this phrase pursued me; and for myself, I be- 
lieve it is the current philosophy in these parts. 
I have some difficulty in imagining a better. It's 
not only a great flight of confidence for a man to 
change his creed and go out of his family for 
heaven's sake ; but the odds are — nay, and the 
hope is — that, with all this great transition in 
the eyes of man, he has not changed himself a 
hair's-breadth to the eyes of God. Honor to 
those who do so, for the wrench is sore. But 
it argues something narrow, whether of strength 
or weakness-, whether of the prophet or the fool, 
in those who can take a sufficient interest in 



274 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

such infinitesimal and human operations, or who 
can quit a friendship for a doubtful process of 
the mind. And I think I should not leave my 
old creed for another, changing only words for 
other words ; but by some brave reading, embrace 
it in spirit and truth, and find wrong as wrong 
for me as for the best of other communions. 

The phylloxera was in the neighborhood; and 
instead of wine we drank at dinner a more eco- 
nomical juice of the grape — la Parisienne, they 
call it. It is made by putting the fruit whole 
into a cask with water; one by one the berries 
ferment and burst ; what is drunk during the day 
is supplied at night in water; so, with ever an- 
other pitcher from the well, and ever another 
grape exploding and giving out its strength, 
one cask of Parisienne may last a family till 
spring. It is, as the reader will anticipate, a 
feeble beverage, but very pleasant to the taste. 

What with dinner and coffee, it was long past 
three before I left St. Germain de Calberte. I 
went down beside the Gardon of Mialet, a great 
glaring watercourse devoid of water, and through 
St. Etienne de Vallee Francaise, or Val Fran- 
cesque, as they used to call it ; and towards even- 
ing began to ascend the hill of St. Pierre. It 
was a long and steep ascent. Behind me an 
empty carriage returning to St. Jean du Gard 
kept hard upon my tracks, and near the summit 
overtook me. The driver, like the rest of the 
world, was sure I was a pedlar; but, unlike 
others, he was sure of what I had to sell. He had 
noticed the blue wool which hung out of my pack 
at either end; and from this he had decided, 
beyond my power to alter his decision, that I 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 275 

dealt in blue-wool collars, such as decorate the 
neck of the French draught-horse. 

I had hurried to the topmost powers of Mo- 
destine, for I dearly desired to see the view upon 
the* other side before the day had faded. But 
it was night when I reached the summit; the 
moon was riding high and clear ; and only a few 
grey streaks of twilight lingered in the west. A 
yawning valley, gulfed in blackness, lay like a 
hole in created Nature at my feet; but the out- 
line of the hills was sharp against the sky. There 
was Mount Aigoal, the stronghold of Castanet. 
And Castanet, not only as an active undertaking 
leader, deserves some mention among Camisards ; 
for there is a spray of rose among his laurel; 
and he showed how, even in a public tragedy, 
love will have its way. In the high tide of war 
he married, in his mountain citadel, a young and 
pretty lass called Mariette. There were great 
rejoicings; and the bridegroom released five-and- 
twenty prisoners in honor of the glad event. 
Seven months afterwards Mariette, the Princess 
of the Cevennes, as they called her in derision, 
fell into the hands of the authorities, where it 
was like to have gone hard with her. But Cas- 
tanet was a man of execution, and loved his 
wife. He fell on Valleraugue, and got a lady 
there for a hostage; and for the first and last 
time in that war there was an exchange of prison- 
ers. Their daughter, pledge of some starry 
night upon Mount Aigoal, has left descendants 
to this day. 

Modestine and I — it was our last meal to- 
gether — had a snack upon the top of St. Pierre, 
I on a heap of stones, she standing by me in the 



276 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

* 

moonlight and decorously eating bread out of 
my hand. The poor brute would eat more 
heartily in this manner; for she had a sort of 
affection for me, which I was soon to betray. 

It was a long descent upon St. Jean du Gard, 
and we met no one but a carter, visible afar off 
by the glint of the moon on his extinguished 
lantern. 

Before ten o'clock we had got in and were at 
supper; fifteen miles and a stiff hill in little be- 
yond six hours! 



FAREWELL, MODESTINE 

On examination, on the morning of October 
4th, Modestine was pronounced unfit for travel. 
She would need at least two days' repose ac- 
cording to the ostler; but I was now eager to 
reach Alais for my letters; and, being in a civi- 
lized country of stage-coaches, I determined to 
sell my lady-friend and be off by the diligence 
that afternoon. Our yesterday's march, with 
the testimony of the driver who had pursued 
us up the long hill of St. Pierre, spread a favor- 
able notion of my donkey's capabilities. Intend- 
ing purchasers were aware of an unrivalled 
opportunity. Before ten I had an offer of twen- 
ty-five francs ; and before noon, after a desperate 
engagement, I sold her, saddle and all, for five- 
and-thirty. The pecuniary gain is not obvious, 
but I had bought freedom into the bargain. 

St. Jean du Gard is a large place and largely 
Protestant. The maire, a Protestant, asked me 
to help him in a small matter which is itself 
characteristic of the country. The young women 
of the Cevennes profit by the common religion and 
the difference of the language to go largely as 
governesses into England; and here was one, a 
native of Mialet, struggling with English cir- 
culars from two different agencies in London. 
I gave what help I could; and volunteered some 
advice, which struck me as being excellent. 

One thing more I note. The phylloxera has 
ravaged the vineyards in this neighborhood ; and 
in the early morning, under some chestnuts by 

277 



278 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

the river, I found a party of men working with 
a cider-press. I could not at first make out what 
they were after, and asked one fellow to explain. 

" Making cider," he said. " Oui, c'est comme 
ca. Comme dans le nord!" 

There was a ring of sarcasm in his voice; the 
country was going to the devil. 

It was not until I was fairly seated by the 
driver, and rattling through a rocky valley with 
dwarf olives, that I became aware of my bereave- 
ment. I had lost Modestine. Up to that mo- 
ment I had thought I hated her ; but now she was 
gone, 

" And, O, 
The difference to me ! " 

For twelve days we had been fast companions ; 
we had travelled upwards of a hundred and 
twenty miles, crossed several respectable ridges, 
and jogged along with our six legs by many a 
rocky and many a boggy by-road. After the 
first day, although sometimes I was hurt and 
distant in manner, I still kept my patience; and 
as for her, poor soul! she had come to regard 
me as a god. She loved to eat out of my hand. 
She was patient, elegant in form, the color of 
an ideal mouse, and inimitably small. Her 
faults were those of her race and sex ; her virtues 
were her own. Farewell, and if for ever 

Father Adam wept when he sold her to me; 
after I had sold her in my turn, I was tempted 
to follow his example; and being alone with a 
stage-driver and four or five agreeable young 
men, I did not hesitate to yield to my emotion. 

THE END 



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